


Beloved Adversary, Part Two

by Sondra



Series: Beloved Adversary [2]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sondra/pseuds/Sondra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Blake and the others formulate plans to leave Gauda Prime for Ryanec 5 (the planet where the Federation has its central manufacturing plant for Pylene-50), a quarrel between Blake and Avon sends Avon storming off into the forest where he's captured by Servalan, who tortures him and leaves him to die.  Will Blake be able to locate and rescue him in time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beloved Adversary, Part Two

I

 

The discovery of a cache of Pylene‑50 at the Federation Base was a seriously unsettling one to Blake and his rebels. The realization that the Federation had overcome one of the drug's major drawbacks--its extreme instability--was even more worrisome. Pylene‑50 had been at the heart of the Federation's Pacification and Control Program since shortly after the end of the Intergalactic War. It was the pet project of ex-Supreme Commander, ex-President Servalan, now plying her mischief under the name of Commissioner Sleer. Originally a harmless muscle relaxant, Pylene‑50 was discovered to have quite other and insidious properties when administered in doses one hundred times the normal strength.  It blocked the production of adrenalin in the human body, with the result that the person receiving the drug lost all will to resist authority. Yet the ability to work and function in other ways remained unimpaired. It was thus an ideal tool for subjugation of dissident populations and became part and parcel of the Federation's recolonization program following the disastrous destruction of Star One by the Andromedans. By the point in time when Avon had attempted to forge his ill-fated alliance with Zukan and the other warlords, Pylene‑50 was being pumped into the reservoirs and atmospheres of all planets under Federation control.

An antidote existed, but the raw materials needed to manufacture it were difficult to come by. Forbus, the reluctant inventor of Pylene‑50, had given the formula for the antidote to Tarrant and Dayna on Helotrix shortly before Commissioner Sleer murdered him. Passed on to Avon and the warlords, that formula had since fallen into Federation hands--a development which only increased their ability to use the drug with impunity.

After the raid on the base and the revelation that the Federation had a central manufacturing and processing plant for Pylene‑50 on Ryanec 5, Blake became obsessed with learning more about the planet in question. He interrogated Orac for hours, extracting every last bit of data the computer could supply him with. To Avon, Blake appeared dangerously close to reprising his former fanatic preoccupation with Central Control.  But Avon had preoccupations of his own which kept him from dwelling too much on that observation: he was working day and night on the masking device which would allow the rebels to use Orac to contact Avalon about a rescue ship. Or, rather, _trying_ to work day and night. He was being slowed down by the drain on his energies caused by the wound he had inflicted upon himself and by nausea from the antibiotics he was taking to suppress infection and by dulled reflexes from the pain medication he likewise could not really function without. Soolin tended the wound daily, keeping it as clean as possible and applying fresh dressings. Avon allowed the contact and physical intimacy which that required, but was otherwise uncharacteristically taciturn and withdrawn.

Or perhaps it was not all that uncharacteristic, for Vila in particular felt he had seen it all before--while Dayna, Tarrant and Soolin half-expected the man to appear any moment wearing the black leather-studded outfit he had donned the whole while he was commanding the _Scorpio_.

At any rate, the atmosphere in the farmhouse had undergone an unmistakable change--and it was emphatically not a change for the better. Relations between Blake and Avon remained excruciatingly tense. That awful moment after Blake hit Arlen had torn the fabric of trust between them, in testimony to which fact the unhealed hole in Avon's arm loomed like an unwanted symbol. The others, increasingly affected by the pall of gloom hanging over the household, tried repeatedly to analyze the situation, in the hope that comprehension might lead to rectification.

On this particular day it was Vila and the two women who sat speculating in front of the fireplace. "Avon resents that he went through pain for Blake," Dayna suggested.

"No," countered Soolin, "Avon resents that Blake refuses to get his own hands as dirty as Avon's."

"No," declared Vila, "Avon resents that Blake refuses to admit that his own hands _are_ as dirty as Avon's."

"Right," said a voice from the door. Blake walked into the room, carrying some sort of data sheets. They all looked up at him with mild guilt. "Well, almost right," he amended. "Actually, I don't deny that my hands are dirty.  But Avon doesn't seem to regard my admission as genuine."

"He thinks your guilt is self-pity--again," Vila observed.

Blake shrugged. "Has anyone seen Deva?"

"I think he's upstairs with Tarrant," Dayna said. "Would you like me to call him for you?"

"Please." The girl jumped up to comply.

At that moment Avon sauntered into the room. "I've got it working if anyone is interested," he announced.

A smile spread across Blake's face.  "The masking device is finished?"

"That's what working means," Avon answered acidly.

Blake ignored the sarcasm.  "Good job," he said sincerely.

"What kind were you expecting?" Avon sneered and turned on his heel.

Soolin saw the pain in Blake's eyes and walked over to him. "I wish I could make it better," she whispered, stroking his arm.

"Only Avon can do that," he replied sadly.

"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of," the woman muttered, letting her hand fall back.

"Let's go see what he's done, shall we?" Blake proposed. "One of you stay and let the others know what's happening, okay?" Without waiting for a response, he exited the room.

"I'll stay," Vila offered.

"Good," Soolin said intensely, not even looking at him. "I've something else to do first." With determined strides, she marched off after Avon.

She caught up with him in the kitchen where he was swallowing his medication tablets. "Avon, I want to talk to you," she said firmly.

He finished his sip of water and set the glass down. "It would seem you are doing so."

"This has gone on long enough."

"What has?"

"Don't play innocent with me, Avon," the woman scoffed. "What you did with Arlen was clever and creative and unbelievably brave, but what you're doing now is contemptible."

"Really?" Avon returned calmly.

"You're punishing Blake for one thoughtless outburst uttered in the heat of stress."

"Is that what I'm doing?"

"How can you be so cold?"

He flashed her a smile. "Lifelong trademark."

"Blake has apologized," she pointed out. "He's asked for your forgiveness openly, unabashedly, in front of everyone. What more do you want him to do? Grovel?"

The prospect seemed to spread the smile from Avon's lips to his eyes. "You must admit it would make for an interesting change," he said.

Soolin stared at him in horror. "You know nothing about love, do you?"

"And you do," he retorted.

"Avon--"

"Leave it alone, Soolin." He paused, then added, "And if you have any sense, leave _him_ alone."

"What does that mean?" the woman demanded.

"That he will break your heart," Avon said simply. Then he walked from the room.

"Well, at least I have a heart to break!" she called after him, adding in exasperation under her breath, "How can Blake possibly think you love him?"

"Because it's true," said Vila's voice from behind her. Having dutifully waited for Dayna to return with Tarrant and Deva and having informed them of the impending meeting, he now wandered into the  kitchen looking for something to snack on.

Soolin scowled at him. "That's not love, Vila, that's obsession." She stomped out of the room before he could reply.

Vila picked up a piece of leftover roasted meat from the previous night's dinner and bit into it. "Nice distinction if you can manage to pin it down," he remarked.

*****

The masking device was hooked up to Orac, as was the vis-screen "creatively acquired" on the night of the raid. The group sat around in excited anticipation as Avon made a few last-minute adjustments. "Just to keep the device from interfering with the quality of our reception," he explained.

"You mean so we don't mask ourselves," Vila interpreted brightly.

"Something like that," Avon conceded with an indulgent smile.

A picture began to appear on the vis-screen, fuzzy at first, then the outlines sharpened to reveal a familiar and welcome face.

"Hello, Avalon," Blake greeted the image. "Are you receiving us?"

"Loud and clear, Blake," the woman replied. "You're looking well."

"Good to see you, girl," the rebel leader beamed back. "We've been hearing glowing reports about your activities on Iridian."

"We hear very little of you, Blake," Avalon said. "Are there grounds for hoping that's about to change?"

"Indeed there are," Blake answered confidently. "But we need your help."

"What can I do for you, Blake?"

"You can come and get us out of here, girl," was the frank reply. "We need off-planet just as soon as possible."

"Like yesterday," added Avon, barging into the transmission.

"Hello, Avon," Avalon greeted him now. "I see you haven't changed a bit. Gracious as ever." Then, "Is the rest of the _Liberator_ crew with you, Blake?"

"Only Vila," Blake answered. "Jenna, Cally, and Gan are all dead."

"Usefully, I hope," Avalon murmured, the compassion and solidarity in her eyes belying the harshness of her words.

"I'm going to be sick," Avon said in disgust.

"Not in here, please," Vila begged him. "I've cleaned up enough vomit recently. Even if most of it was my own," he added under his breath.

"We have some new crew," Blake was telling Avalon now. "Avon's people and an associate of mine from here on Gauda Prime. But time enough for you to meet them later. Now we must formulate a plan. I have a couple of options in mind--"

"Somehow I thought you would," the woman teased.

"Option One," Blake began. "You can come in your own ship. If you come in your own ship, you'll have to get through the atmospheric defenses. We do have the plans for them, and the Federation may not realize we have them, but they'll probably figure we might have them if they realize Avon had enough time with the computer before he was discovered. So there's a chance they may alter the defenses."

"Sounds like there's an interesting story lurking somewhere between your words," Avalon surmised. "What's Option Two?"

"Option Two is a bit more complicated. We've learned recently that the Federation has solved the instability problem they've been having with Pylene‑50. They no longer need to manufacture it on the planet where it is to be used."

Worry spread across Avalon's face. "That doesn't sound very good," she remarked.

"No, it doesn't," Blake agreed. "And unfortunately we've discovered that they now have a central processing plant for the drug from which they are shipping it all across the galaxy. But fortunately we know where that plant is located--on a planet called Ryanec 5."

"I've heard of it," Avalon interrupted. "It's in the Fourth Sector, isn't it?"

"That's right--which puts Iridian between it and Gauda Prime. Also, fortunately, the Federation doesn't realize that we know about Ryanec 5."

"That's debatable," Avon muttered under his breath.

"What's your plan, Blake?" Avalon asked.

"If we can let you know in enough time when the next shipment of Pylene‑50 is on its way from Ryanec 5 to Gauda Prime and supply you with its course, you could intercept it and bring it in for us."

"You mean hijack it?"

"Yes," Blake confirmed. "You could bring it right into the base masquerading as Federation personnel."

"You want me to deliver a cargo of Pylene‑50 into the hands of the Federation?" Avalon echoed incredulously.

"Well, not exactly," Blake admitted, "not in a useable form anyway. Nothing too obvious, mind you. Perhaps a contaminant they won't discover until after you leave, one they'll attribute to incompetence at the laboratory on Ryanec 5."

"Then somehow our ship picks you up."

"Right. The details can be worked out later. The point is you come and go with full Federation approval."

Avalon considered for a moment, then she smiled. "I like it, Blake. I like it a lot."

"I always did like your sense of adventure, girl," he returned.

Under his breath Avon whispered, "A mutual admiration society of idealistic dreamers. How positively uninspiring."

"One more thing," Blake was saying now. "Can you manage to bring a surgeon along with you? One of our people is in need of a skin graft."

"I think that can be arranged," Avalon agreed. "But where will you be wanting us to drop you, Blake? You're welcome to join us on Iridian, of course, but--"

"That's something I need to give more thought to," Blake cut in. "Right now I'd like to turn you over to our pilot to discuss the logistics of actually plotting the course for this operation."

From the corner of the room where he'd deposited himself after his sarcastic pronouncement about idealists, Avon suddenly looked up. _Our_ pilot?  he mouthed silently to himself.

"Del Tarrant at your service, Avalon," said the man with a chivalrous smile as he slid into the seat which Blake vacated in front of the vis-screen. "Here's how it's going to work. Orac will be instructed to monitor all Federation communications pertaining to space traffic leaving Ryanec 5..."

Tarrant's voice receded into the background of Avon's consciousness as Blake suddenly appeared in front of him. For a moment they just looked at one another. It was Blake who spoke first. "Can I talk to you?"

"Can I stop you?"

Blake laid a guiding hand on Avon's shoulder. "Let's step outside, shall we?" he gestured. "We've caused them enough stress as it is."

Avon swept Blake's hand away with a vicious shove. The man's earnest expression of concern for the others at a time when he himself was so obviously suffering irritated Avon no end. Still he followed Blake from the room.

"You know, Avon," the rebel leader began quietly, "there's an aspect of what happened the other night that you're not facing."

"Oh?"

"I never asked you to do what you did."

"No, you merely asked me _not_ to do what I _didn't_ ," Avon returned. "And left me to sort out the remainder," he added, glaring.

" _You_ volunteered to conduct the interrogation," Blake reminded him. "Damn near insisted on it, in fact."

Avon sighed impatiently. "Get to the point, Blake--if there is one."

"Okay, we may have disagreed over what constituted permissible means of extracting that information from Arlen. There should be nothing surprising in that--it's one of a whole host of things you and I have disagreed about from Day One. I respect your right to your views--"

"As long as I don't attempt to act on them," Avon inserted.

"Avon, you may blame your suffering on my moral fastidiousness," Blake said. "God knows I do. But you did not get that information 'for me', as you put it, not entirely. I wasn't the only one between us who wanted it."

"And how do you arrive at that brilliant deduction?" Avon sneered.

"Simple," Blake replied. "When you were on your own, you attempted to forge an alliance against the Federation for the express purpose of combatting Servalan's use of Pylene‑50. The drug outrages you as much as it does me. It's an affront to a free mind, and you believe in free minds, Avon, as much as I do--perhaps more."

The hostility in Avon's eyes receded; for just the briefest instant he looked unsure of himself. Then whatever might have happened next was interrupted by Tarrant's sticking his head through the doorway to the adjacent room and announcing that his strategy session with Avalon was finished.

*****

"You were looking for me, Blake, before all this?" Deva inquired, catching up with him as the group filed casually into the sitting room. It was nearly midday, time for lunch, and lunch at the farmhouse was an informal affair, with people rarely even bothering to come to table for it.

"Yes, I've prepared a summary of the data we extracted from the Federation computer concerning the way the administration of Gauda Prime will be conducted under Federation auspices." He handed Deva the sheets he'd been carrying with him earlier. Then he felt someone nudge his arm and looked up. "Oh, thank you, Soolin."

She had handed him a plate containing the daily ration of canned fruits and vegetables. She went around the room handing similar plates to everyone else. Tarrant, Dayna, and Vila accepted theirs graciously. Avon made a face at his and handed it back. She wondered briefly why he even stayed in the room since he made it so abundantly clear that Blake's presence was an insult to him and that of the others utterly irrelevant...

But Avon seemed intent on watching Blake with Deva. "You want me to take this around to one or two of our key people, then," the latter was saying.

"Three of our key people, actually," Blake corrected. He leaned over and whispered into Deva's ear.

"Right. Got it." Deva nodded. "When?"

"As soon as Tarrant can free up some time to fly you around."

The pilot looked up at the mention of his name. "Tomorrow?" he suggested.

"Tomorrow will be fine," Deva agreed.

"One other thing," Blake continued. "I want you to be particularly careful walking around the settlements. Disguise yourself as best you can before you leave here, and stay out of public sight as much as you can."

"Why is that, Blake?" Avon called out in a tone so overly casual as to be oozing challenge with every syllable. Suddenly all private conversations in the room ceased, and everyone's attention was focused on their exchange.

"Because a lot of people know Deva," Blake answered unnecessarily. "A lot of people can recognize him, and he's a wanted fugitive now just like the rest of us."

"Yes," Avon returned silkily. "You did blow the last possible shred of the man's cover in front of Arlen, didn't you? And then you let her live--twice."

"You're out of line, Avon!" Deva rebuked him sharply.

Avon was unfazed. "Pardon me for breathing," he murmured.

"Blake knew I'd be coming with him under the circumstances."

"Pardon me again," Avon repeated. "I do not seem to recall hearing him _ask_." Blake appeared to react to that, and Avon immediately leaned harder. "But then I forgot--Blake doesn't need to ask. He knows what people are going to do _before_ they tell him. Hell, he knows what people are going to do before _they_ know what they are going to do. Isn't that right, Blake?" The rebel leader said nothing, but he was clearly smoldering inside. "It's a pity you're so incorruptible," Avon continued. "You could have made a fortune working for the Federation--as a psychostrategist."

Blake's eyes burned with anger. He looked as if he were about to explode, but he bit down hard, clenched his hands together and remained silent.

"There's something I want you all to know," Deva said uneasily, attempting to de-escalate the impending confrontation. "Something I've made a decision about." It was working. Gradually everyone's attention came to rest on him, and Blake's face relaxed a bit. "When I'm out there tomorrow," Deva continued, "or any other time I'm in danger of being picked up--it won't happen is all."

"What won't happen?" Dayna asked.

"My capture," he answered. "I've decided that I won't be taken alive."

Amazed looks passed amongst the group. Blake looked positively shocked. "That's not necessary, Deva," he said.

"Well, of course it is, Blake," Avon contradicted in that same taunting tone of voice. "It's more than necessary--it's the price of admission to the club. Congratulations, Deva, for finally figuring that out."

Realizing that Avon was using the confidential information he'd acquired by eavesdropping just before the raid on the base, Blake shot the man a look of total outrage. It was that "protective shepherd" look which Blake was capable of assuming in a heartbeat and which Avon detested with a passion, a look which said, "Attack me if you must, but keep your hands off my flock if you know what's good for you."

But Avon didn't, it seemed, for he pushed on mercilessly. "What I'd like to know, Blake, is what about the old-time members?" He indicated the rest of the group with a sweep of his hand. "Renewal fees must be just about due, and I'm wondering in what coin they shall be collected. What death-defying feats must they perform for you this time, Blake? What agonies of the flesh and spirit must they demonstrate their willingness to endure?"

Before the "shepherd" could make reply, the "flock" had rallied to his defense. "That's enough, Avon!" Soolin exclaimed.

"Yes," Dayna agreed. "That's a grotesque thing to say."

Avon regarded her, raising an eyebrow. "Odd you should find it a grotesque thing for me to say, but not find it a grotesque thing for him to do."

"You really are a bastard, Avon," Tarrant muttered, shaking his head.

Unperturbed, the man looked from one to the other of Blake's defenders. "Fascinating," he declared. "What's it been--four weeks? Not even." He flashed his best sardonic smile at the object of their defense. "Congratulations, Blake."

It was the final straw. Blake rose to his feet, seething like a volcano on the brink of eruption. He had his empty lunch plate in his hand. All semblance of self-control gone, he took the plate and flung it against the wall. As it shattered into a dozen pieces, he stared briefly at Avon, then stormed from the room.

They could hear him an instant later ascending the staircase, every step a crushing blow trampling a non-existent enemy. Avon rose calmly and smiled with satisfaction. "If anyone needs me, I'll be out back," he announced. In sharp contrast to Blake's departure, his was eerily quiet.

The moment he was gone, Deva leapt to his feet and said angrily, "He can't be permitted to get away with that."

"What do you propose to do about it?" Soolin shot back comically. Then, "Hey, wait a minute.  Where do you think you're going?"

"After him," Deva answered, moving to do so.

"I wouldn't if I were you," Tarrant advised. "Not while he's in that mood about Blake and you're in that mood about him."

"Why? What can he do to me?"

"How about kill you?" Dayna suggested.

Deva snorted. "Yeah, well, maybe I'd rather die defending Blake than live with myself knowing I didn't." He rubbed his hands together and stalked off with grim determination.

"I hope that was a figure of speech," Soolin said, staring after him.

Vila looked at her, looked at all of them. "Makes you wonder, though, if Avon's got a point, don't it?" he remarked.

*****

"Avon!" Deva bellowed. "I want to talk to you!"

About three meters away on the grass with his back to Blake's assistant, Avon stopped and sighed. First Soolin, then Blake, now Deva, he thought silently. Three down. Three to go. Only three is just about my limit for one day. As he turned around slowly to face the challenge, Deva's fingers closed around his wrist. Avon looked down at the aggressive gesture with deliberation and said quietly, "You have five seconds to remove your hand from my arm before I remove it from yours."

Deva swallowed hard and let go of Avon's wrist. He could easily imagine how the man had terrified Arlen that night.

"That's much better," Avon declared almost sweetly. "Now, what's on your," he paused significantly and cleared his throat, "mind?"

"Roj Blake is the finest human being I have ever known," Deva started passionately.

Avon shrugged. "As I already said, welcome to the club."

"He is also the finest human being _you_ will ever know," Deva continued, ignoring the amused stare meant to mock him, "and for some inconceivable reason, he loves you."

"Blake doesn't need a reason, Deva," Avon cooed tauntingly. "Blake loves everyone. He loved the Decimas. He loved a parasite named Zil. He probably even loved the Andromedans."

"Not the way he loves you," Deva insisted steadily. "And you just throw it in his face. Over and over and over again. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What the hell is wrong with _you_?" Avon snapped back. "If you want him so badly, Deva, why don't you make your move?"

As the meaning of Avon's words slowly sunk in, Deva turned a deep shade of red. "I beg your pardon?" he managed to mumble.

"Well, Soolin's not having much luck," Avon said with a shrug. "Maybe you have what he needs." Pleased with himself for having produced such consternation, he patted the smaller man on the cheek and slipped away.

Deva shuddered, unconsciously rubbing at the spot Avon had touched, as if to cleanse himself. "You--have what he needs, you bloody fool," he whispered hotly, "and it's not that."

*****

If he couldn't help Blake by getting through to Avon, Deva decided, maybe he could help Blake by helping Blake.

Blake was lying on his bed, deep in thought, when he heard a knock at his door, followed by a voice. "Blake, it's Deva, may I come in?" The door opened tentatively and a head peered through.

Blake pulled himself up into a sitting position. "Please do," he invited warmly.

"Just wanted to see how you're doing," Deva smiled, reflecting suddenly to himself on what it meant that one could say such things to Blake without tiresome games of indirection.

"I'm fine, Deva," Blake assured him. "And I'm glad you stopped by. There's something I need to ask you."

"If you're going to try to talk me out of my decision about not being taken alive--"

"Well, yes, that, too, as a matter of fact."

"Please don't." Deva's eyes radiated a profound tranquility which made the prospect of quarrelling with his position seem like a clumsy intrusion.

So Blake opted for something other than a frontal assault. "You know, don't you, that if you were caught, I would do everything in my power to get you back."

Deva felt suddenly as if he had wronged the man he wanted so desperately to protect at all costs. "Oh, Blake, of course I know that," he hastened to assure him. "Don't think for a minute that I lack faith in your intentions or your ability. I know you got Cally back once when she was captured by the Federation. Hell, I know you got Avalon back, snatched her right out from under their noses. So, yes, I believe you would come for me, and I believe you would get to me as soon as you could."

"Then why this talk of suicide?" Blake asked softly.

"Because it might not be soon enough," Deva answered. "Blake, if I betrayed you, if I betrayed what we're fighting for, or if I caused harm to come to those wonderful people downstairs--most of them anyway," he amended in a mumble, and Blake chuckled good-naturedly, "I could never forgive myself," he concluded.

"Deva--"

"My mind's made up, Blake. Don't try to change it."

Blake looked at him sadly. "All right," he agreed. "But I can't begin to tell you how much I would miss you, old friend."

Deva smiled. "What else was it you wanted to discuss with me?"

Blake looked him straight in the eye and asked, "Was Avon right?"

Deva's mouth fell open. He blinked in astonishment. "Oh come on, Blake--"

"No, please, I have to know. Did I usurp your freedom of choice by making it impossible for you to go on leading a normal life on this planet?"

Deva shook his head. "I wanted to come with you. You knew that."

"No, I _assumed_ that," Blake shot back.

"Well, you assumed right," Deva said with a shrug.

Blake chuckled to himself and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you."

"Why the hell not?"

"You can't give me an objective answer. You're not impartial enough." He paused. "Deva, do me a favor, will you?"

"Of course."

"Bring Orac to me."

"Here?" the man exclaimed. "Why in the world--?"

"I'd get it myself," Blake continued, "Only I don't really want to risk running into Avon just now. I don't think it would be particularly healthy for either one of us."

That seemed to satisfy Deva. "Okay," he agreed. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

*****

Try as she might, Soolin couldn't get the image of Blake's face out of her mind. She couldn't forget the naked hurt in his eyes when Avon said those calculatingly cruel things to him. She wished to herself that Blake could learn to mask his pain better--not completely the way Avon did, but to some degree. As matters stood, Blake was far too vulnerable...

Or was he? It struck her on reconsideration that Blake didn't hide the hurt because he felt no need to, _had_ no need to. Unlike Avon--unlike her, for that matter--Blake did not equate emotional honesty with weakness. He wore no armor against self-disclosure because self-disclosure _was_ his armor.

Tarrant and Dayna were dragging logs to the fireplace. Vila was sipping a glass of wine and babbling to himself about it. Soolin finished picking up the pieces of the plate Blake had broken and deposited the last of them in the trash.

Suddenly Deva appeared, carrying Orac. He headed for the staircase.

"What are you doing?" Soolin asked.

"Blake wants Orac," the man replied.

"In his bedroom?" Dayna exclaimed.

"That's where he happens to be and where he's planning to stay," Deva said matter-of-factly and disappeared up the steps.

"I have a suggestion," Soolin addressed the group. "Nobody tell Avon about this."

"That Blake has Orac in his room?" Tarrant returned. "Why not?"

"Because I'm not up for a round of dirty jokes about it," Soolin replied.

A sudden series of cackles erupted from Vila--as if the possible dirty jokes in question had just paraded through his mind. Soolin looked at him crossly. "Okay, okay, we don't tell Avon," he agreed.

*****

Deva delivered the computer to Blake's room. As soon as he'd left, the rebel leader got up from the bed and inserted Orac's activator key. "I love you, Orac," he said.

*Self-confrontation program is now available and running,* responded Orac, *Please pose your question.*

Returning to the bed, Blake reclined against his pillow, his legs outstretched for maximum comfort and as much relaxation as his troubled mind would allow. "Tell me, Orac," he said earnestly, "Do I manipulate people?"

*****

Avon strode purposefully into the sitting room by way of the room where the link-up with Avalon had taken place. "Where's Orac?" he asked the group gathered there.

Exaggerated innocent looks jumped back and forth, arousing Avon's suspicions immediately. "Isn't it in the other room?" Tarrant queried.

"Obviously not," Avon replied.

"Well, don't look at me," Dayna said. "I don't know where it is."

Avon turned to Soolin. "I haven't the faintest notion," she lied brightly. "Excuse me." She ducked into the kitchen.

"I've got to go help her," Dayna announced immediately and followed after the woman.

"I've got to go help them," Tarrant declared and did likewise, nearly tripping over his own feet as he went.

"Sudden epidemic of helpfulness we have here," Avon muttered. Then he spotted the one remaining potential informant. "Vila--" he said exuberantly.

"Hi, Avon, how's the arm?"

The thief barely got the words out before Avon had him by the collar of his shirt. "It's your arm, not mine, I'd worry about if I were you," he hissed. He yanked Vila out of the chair and pinned him against the wall, twisting the man's arm behind his back. Vila started to moan in pain.

On the other side of the door to the kitchen, Dayna listened and turned to the others with a sigh. "There goes our secret," she predicted.

Back in the sitting room, Avon asked, "Where's Orac?"

"I don't know," Vila whined. "Honest I don't."

Avon increased his pressure on Vila's arm and repeated, "Where's Orac?"

"In bed with Blake," the thief blurted suddenly. "I mean, in Blake's bedroom," he corrected hastily and sighed with relief as Avon let him go.

"With Blake," Avon echoed thoughtfully. "You don't say?"

"Yeah, well, you _made_ me say," Vila sulked, rubbing his arm.

Avon chuckled. "Didn't take much, did it?" Then he grew serious again. "I wonder what Blake's doing with Orac."

"Probably asking it more questions about Ryanec 5," Vila suggested.

"Possibly," Avon said, glancing upwards towards the second floor. "On the other hand--" A look of near wondrous astonishment spread across his face as he contemplated the alternative explanation which had just occurred to him. "No, it couldn't be," he said dismissively. Then his glance crept upwards once more. "Could it be?"

*****

Orac responded to Blake's question with a request for clarification. *Define 'manipulate'.*

Blake pondered for a moment, then carefully formulated his reply. "To employ devious means to get others to do what I wish them to do, which may not be what _they_ wish to do, and may not be in their best  interest."

*What do you wish for others, Roj Blake?* the computer asked softly.

This time there was no hesitation. "Freedom. Dignity. Fulfillment."

*Freedom from what?*

"Manipulation." A smile danced in his eyes as he savored the irony.

*Whose?* Orac continued to prod.

"Anyone's," Blake answered.  "The Federation's primarily, I suppose. Which is why it would be monstrous for me to do what the Federation does, to utilize their methods." He paused in painful anticipation of the revelation to come. "Have I utilized their methods?"

*Like when you wouldn't torture Arlen?* retorted Orac. *Like when you wouldn't kill Arlen?*

Blake was on his feet now, pacing the floor. "Like when I _assumed_ Deva was coming with me," he countered ruthlessly. "Like when I _assumed_ Avon would take over for me and continue the rebellion."

*Do you know your heart, Roj Blake?*

The question brought the man to a sudden stop with its seeming incongruity. "Odd you should ask that," he said. "It may be the only part of me I do know for sure." His voice slowed down and tears filled his eyes, as terrible memories came flooding back to him. "The Federation played havoc with everything else," he recounted. "They violated my body. They crawled inside my mind. They forced me to betray everyone and everything I cherished." Now the tears were rolling down his cheeks. "I tried to fight them, to stop them," he whispered passionately. "God, how I tried! I would have died rather than give in to them. I would have borne any pain, accepted any mutilation... But they forced me anyway, just marched in and took what they wanted. And afterward, there were huge chunks of my mind, of my memory, that were gone. Some are still gone." He sighed deeply, wiping away the tears. "But they couldn't reach my heart, Orac," he continued in response to the question he'd been asked. "They can't reach anyone's heart. Only a heart can reach another heart, and they have none."

*Aptly put, Roj Blake,* the computer declared. *The heart is immune to manipulation. Hearts meet in freedom, in purity, in unending light. And he who knows his own heart can read the hearts of others.*

Blake sat at the edge of his bed now, his chin resting on his hands. "What are you telling me, Orac?"

*That it is not manipulation to perceive what another heart longs for, even when the owner of that heart has blinded himself to it. It is not manipulation to foresee the journey another heart will take and to facilitate that journey.*

"And if I get them killed? Like Gan. Like Jenna."

*Death comes to all, Roj Blake,* Orac replied. *It is a fulfillment when it comes with such meaning and purpose as allows the heart to survive it. Do you think Gan or Jenna died blaming you?*

"I don't know."

*They died blessing you.*

A fresh flood of tears sprang to Blake's eyes, bathing his face. "You are a strange computer, Orac," he said. "I think I really do love you."

*This is a self-confrontation program, Blake,* interjected the computer's normally testy voice. *He who runs it encounters only himself and discovers only what he already knows.*

A warm, wonderful sensation of wholeness enveloped the man. The tears on his cheeks evaporated suddenly as if the sun which was his soul had miraculously dried them. A smile of pure contentment and peace broke through. "Thank you, Orac," he murmured, retrieving the activator key.  "Thank you for the reintroduction."

 

II

 

"We are going to Ryanec 5."

With piercing intensity, Blake's words shattered the relaxed silence of the midday meal. They were having dinner at this atypical hour to take advantage of a particularly tasty catch of fresh fish which Dayna had bestowed upon the household that morning.

As the stunning proclamation reverberated through the room, Avon's fork stopped midway between his plate and his mouth. The mouth opened and a stream of partially masticated fish flesh came tumbling out. Not since he'd heard the announcement that Vila had challenged the Klute to a game of speed chess at Freedom City had Avon been comparably startled into such an undignified gesture. "I'm losing my hearing," he declared, oblivious to the mess. "Somebody tell me I'm losing my hearing."

"You mean we're going to launch a hit-and-run attack on the Pylene‑50 facilities after we acquire a ship?" Tarrant surmised.

"No, I mean we're going to establish a base there," Blake clarified.

"It's _not_ my hearing," Avon said dramatically. "It's my sanity. Please God, let it be my sanity. The alternative is unthinkable." Then suddenly he reached out and grabbed Blake physically.

There was a general ripple of dis-ease around the table--scarcely surprising in light of recent events--and everyone braced tensely for the possibility of needing to spring into action to separate the two men. But Avon merely took Blake's head between his hands and turned it so that it was facing him.  "Look at me," he said forcefully, as if addressing a wayward child. "Read my lips. The Federation knows that we know about Ryanec 5."

"I don't think so," Blake responded quietly.

"Arlen has told them," Avon articulated in the same emphatic tone.

"I don't think so," Blake repeated calmly.

Avon let go of his face. "All right, follow me now if you can," he requested. "Everyone, please? This does affect all our lives." He paused, waiting until he was sure he had their full attention. Then he continued. "Arlen was ready to die to protect that secret."

"I believe that," Blake said, as if Avon's remarks were still addressed to him alone.

"And she thought she was willing to be tortured to protect it."

"I believe _that_ ," Blake repeated.

"Yeah, but you made mincemeat of that illusion for her--so to speak." The awkward interruption had come from Vila. Dayna glared at him. Soolin picked up a napkin and stuffed it in his mouth. Vila pulled out the napkin, rolled it into a ball and flung it aimlessly. It landed on Deva's plate, right in the middle of his portion of fish. He picked it off fastidiously with two fingers. A wave of near-laughter coursed through the group, momentarily dispelling the tension.

Avon spoke again. "The point is, she's capable of self-sacrifice. Why should we assume her sense of duty, not to mention guilt, won't have led her to confess all for the greater good of the Federation?"

"For one thing," Blake replied, "she was really traumatized by what you did to her, what you showed her about herself. It undermined her courage."

"She'll be over that by now," Avon said confidently.

"Why?  Because you would be?" Blake made a sound of gentle dismissal. "For another thing, it's not guilt, it's shame. Arlen is ashamed of what she did, Avon. And people don't readily admit to that which causes them shame."

"Avon doesn't know anything about shame, Blake," Dayna interjected wryly.

"Yeah," added Vila, "only what he reads."

Avon ignored them both and continued speaking to Blake. "So you're saying she's lost her nerve and is no longer willing to die for her beliefs."

"No, I'm saying there's a difference between dying nobly at the hands of one's enemies and dying in disgrace before an execution squad of one's peers."

"I fail to see that difference," Vila snorted.

"You would," Deva sneered at him.

"Tarrant, what do you think?" Avon asked suddenly. "Has Arlen told the Federation?"

"Why ask him?" Blake blurted out, then realizing how that sounded, "I mean, why him in particular?"

"Because he used to _be_ Federation," Avon sighed impatiently.

Blake emitted a chuckle of embarrassment. "I'm sorry," he said genuinely. "I forgot."

" _I'm_ not sorry you forgot," Tarrant shot back, glaring at Avon. "I wish everyone would forget. I try to forget myself."

"I just can't win around here anymore," Avon muttered under his breath.

"What do you think, Tarrant?" Blake picked up the thread of inquiry.

The pilot mulled it over for a minute. "Well, based on my own experience in the Federation, the indoctrination and socialization process we were put through and so forth, I'm inclined to agree with you. However, I'm not sure my agreement is so solid that I'd be prepared to risk the lives of everyone here on the presumption that Avon _couldn't_ be right."

"He's saying the odds are with me," Blake interpreted triumphantly.

"He's saying we don't know," Avon countered.

"Blake," Soolin spoke up for the first time, "let me try to understand your plan. Avalon asked where you wanted her to drop us, and you've decided it should be Ryanec 5. It makes a certain kind of sense, I suppose, from the angle of transportation. The rescue ship will be a hijacked Federation craft out of Ryanec 5 and it will be expected back on Ryanec 5, so, if the pretense can be maintained through the delivery of the cargo to Gauda Prime and beyond, I can see where we might be able to effect an easy planetfall there. But beyond that--?" She stared at him questioningly.

"It looks like Soolin," Avon interjected mockingly. "It sounds like Soolin." He lifted her hand to his face and sniffed it. "It even smells like Soolin. But it's beginning to behave increasingly like Jenna."

The woman pulled her hand away in disgust. "Don't feel bad, Soolin," Vila told her brightly. "I can think of worse people to be compared to than Jenna Stannis."

"Yes, Soolin," Dayna agreed. "Someone might have compared you to Avon."

"Then you'd really have cause to be offended," Deva chimed in.

"You ask why Ryanec 5 beyond the fortuitous transportation opportunity," Blake responded, attempting to explain. "I think it's important for us to be near the heart of the Pylene‑50 operation. We have to find a way to destroy it, after all."

"Allow me to point out," said Avon, "before you go messing around with this drug that the rest of us--Vila, Tarrant, Dayna, Soolin and myself--are all immune to it. But you and he," indicating Deva, "are not."

"I realize that's a problem," Blake acknowledged. "But you still have the formula for the antidote, don't you?"

"Yes, but we don't have access to the raw materials needed to manufacture it," Avon answered.

"Yes, but the Federation does," Blake retorted. "They must. And I'm willing to bet that the antidote is being manufactured at the same plant as the drug itself." There was a pause, then Blake leapt to his feet. "That's it!" he exclaimed excitedly. "We find a way to infiltrate the plant and substitute the antidote for the drug, or mix the antidote with the drug, before it's shipped out. By the time the Federation discovers what's happened, it will be too late. Every population that's marked for 'adaptation' will be immunized."

"That's brilliant," Deva said admiringly.

"Oh sure it is," Avon declared with heavy sarcasm. "And which of us, with our totally unknown faces, is going to walk in the front door of the plant and ask the Federation for a job?"

"I admit there are details yet to be worked out," Blake said.

"Details?" Avon repeated incredulously. "You call that a _detail_ , Blake? For pity's sake, start living in the real world. Ryanec 5 is the last place anyone with any sense would pick for a rebel base."

"Which is precisely why it's the last place the Federation will think to look for us."

"Blake, you're missing the point." Avon sighed with exasperation. "If Arlen's talked, it's the _first_ place they'll look for us. Even if Arlen hasn't talked, the general security arrangements will be of the highest order. We could stumble into Federation hands _without_ them searching for us."

"We're not going to be there all the time," Blake argued. "We'll have a ship, remember. A ship you will presumably equip with photonic drive and a teleport system."

"You're assuming again, Blake," the other man warned. "You're assuming that I am going to be there."

The rebel leader persisted, oblivious to the warning. "It's just that it will be very convenient to be able to disappear from space at will, and we'll be right under their noses."

"Yes," Avon picked it up, "then right under their guns, then right inside their interrogation chambers. Blake, what is wrong with you? Have you some sort of death wish? In the last analysis, have you no care for them?" With a sweep of his hands, he indicated the others seated around the table.

"If you don't know by now that they mean infinitely more to me than my own life--" Blake started in a low, troubled voice.

Avon cut him off in mid-sentence. "I said 'care', Blake. I didn't say 'emotion'. Oh, what's the use? You've never known the difference, and you never will."

This last exchange startled everyone in the room, all the more so because it sounded so unmistakably genuine. Avon wasn't just pawing the ground this time. He was expressing an authentic disagreement with Blake over the _meaning_ of "care". For Blake, care was something one felt. For Avon, it was something one _did_ \--and if the outcome was not successfully protective, then the purest motives in the universe were utterly beside the point. "Avon," Blake was saying now, "it's not going to be as dangerous as you think."

"Really? Why is that?" the other inquired mildly.

"Ever since we learned about Ryanec 5, I've been using Orac to research the place. I know everything there is to know about the planet's history, its geography, its climate, its economy, its social structure--I know where we can hide for months at a time. Damn it, I know more about the place now than the Federation does." Blake finished his passionate argument and waited expectantly for some sign that it had had an impact.

Avon merely rolled his eyes and murmured, "Where have I heard _that_ before?"

Seeing that he had not persuaded Avon, Blake resumed his seat at the head of the table--whatever seat Blake took automatically became the "head" somehow. "We are going to Ryanec 5," he said quietly, but firmly. "No, let me rephrase that. _I_ am going to Ryanec 5." He paused, scanned the group with his large, soulful eyes and then asked, "Who is coming with me?"

"I am," Soolin replied without hesitation.

"Thank you," Blake said to her solemnly.

Tarrant and Dayna looked at each other. They might not be a couple--an item, as Blake had put it--but it was clear that they intended to make this decision together. "Yes, all right," Tarrant said, and at almost the same instant, Dayna said, "You can count me in."

Blake shifted his gaze to Deva. "You don't even have to ask," the man told him.

He shifted his gaze to Vila. "Sure, why the hell not?" quipped the thief. "I've got something better to do?"

Then he shifted his gaze to Avon. A hush fell over the room; everyone seemed literally to be holding their breath. Avon pushed back his chair and stood up. "No," he said, looking at Blake. "Absolutely not. End of discussion. End of--" He didn't finish the thought. He flung down his napkin, turned his back and walked out of the room. Without a word to the others, without so much as a glance at the others, Blake rose and followed him.

"I suggest we give them plenty of space," Dayna said to her companions. "Anyone want to help me clear the table?" Four pairs of eager hands scrambled hastily to assist her.

*****

"Avon," the rebel leader called softly.

Avon stopped, but did not turn around. "That's it, Blake. No more. I'm finished."

"Avon, be reasonable."

Now he did turn around, more like spun around in anger. "I'm reasonable," he said. " _You're_ the one who's _un_ reasonable. I sometimes think you don't even have a nodding acquaintance with reason."

Blake sighed. "Avon, you're free to go if that's your decision. You've always had that choice. But consider how things have changed since we've been apart. What about your people?"

"My people?" Avon echoed disbelievingly.

"Yes, Tarrant and Dayna and Soolin--maybe even Vila at this point."

Avon shook his head. "They're your people now, Blake," he said. "They've been your people since 24 hours after we left your base."

Blake looked as if he were having trouble comprehending. "Is that what this is really about? Your feeling that I've usurped your position with--"

"Oh, of course not," Avon cut in disdainfully. "I never aspired to lead anyone. You know that."

"But you did lead them for two years."

"Then what a relief and an improvement it must be for them to have a real leader now."

Blake didn't know how to respond to that. So he didn't. He simply reiterated his earlier statement. "Avon, I would hate to see you leave. But I won't try to stand in your way."

"Very wise, Blake," the other man sneered. "I have a disturbing habit of cutting down obstacles that stand in my way."

"Avon--"

"Enough! I'm going out for a walk. I need to be alone. To think about how best to put my decision into practice."

"There's no hurry, Avon," Blake said with deep feeling. "Avalon's ship is coming for us. And there'll be a doctor on board for you. You can have the surgery you need. Then I'll see to it that you're taken anywhere you want to go."

Avon smiled cynically. "After I've put in the photonic drive and teleport, no doubt."

The shock in Blake's eyes was growing deeper by the minute. "I hope you will, but we'll manage without if we have to do," he said. "There are no strings attached to my promise to take you where you want to go."

"Generous of you," Avon murmured.

"Did you really think there would be?" Blake exclaimed. "After all you've done for me?"

A strange look came over Avon's face, as if that last question was an insidious worm inside his gut, threatening to devour him. "Understand this, Blake," he said. "My 'doing for you' is at an end. From this moment forward, I won't lift one finger to help you in anything. I won't go one centimeter out of my way. I won't so much as dirty the cuff of my shirtsleeve for you." He walked the remaining distance to the front door, opened the door, stepped through it and let it slam shut behind him.

"He didn't mean that, Blake," said a voice from the other end of the room. Vila strolled in, drink in hand.

"Didn't he?" the rebel leader echoed sadly.

"You know he didn't. Avon would walk over hot coals for you."

Blake threw the thief a gently scolding glance. It seemed, after all, a particularly unfortunate turn of phrase in the circumstances. "Not anymore, Vila," he sighed. "Not that I ever asked such a thing of him, of anyone..."

"Poor Blake," broke spontaneously from Vila's lips--and for just an instant, there was awkwardness between them.

That a Delta should address an Alpha in those terms was unthinkable, would have been unthinkable, at any rate, if the Alpha had not been Blake. But it truly was different with Blake; he truly had no hang-ups about "class". So Vila simply continued. "But it's not a matter of your asking, don't you know?" Blake looked at him in open, unabashed ignorance. "Don't you--really--know?" he repeated slowly. Blake responded with a slight shrug, a barely perceptible negative headshake and that same wide-eyed innocence which years of violence and bloodshed had never managed to erase.

"It's more like being intoxicated," Vila explained. "On this stuff," he added, indicating the glass of wine he was holding. "And Avon's the most intoxicated of the lot. He just handles the hangovers badly is all."

Blake smiled to himself, as if he were translating the clumsy metaphor into his own language, recognizing the truth in it, and drawing comfort from that truth. He reached over to squeeze the other man's shoulder with affection and gratitude.

For Vila the glow of the wine suddenly increased several-fold. Blake was the only one amongst the Alphas who had ever truly appreciated him, the only one to show it, anyway. In that instant Vila felt that even he might one day rise to heights of heroism for Roj Blake.

*****

It was nearly nightfall by the time Kerr Avon started to calm down. He had walked for hours in a blind frenzy and finally stopped to rest in a clearing of evergreen trees. He was coming to terms now with the depth of his anger, with how he and Blake had allowed themselves to slip back into their old pattern of hostile interaction. "No," he corrected himself with merciless honesty, "Not Blake _and_ me. Just me." He leaned back against a tree trunk and sighed. The posture reminded him instantly of a similar tree he'd leaned against in a similar patch of forest the day he'd first arrived on Gauda Prime. Orac, he thought with a mixture of tenderness and resentment, why couldn't you leave well enough alone? Why did you have to make me face it?

Tenderness and resentment. How close that came to describing the twin feelings which Blake had aroused in him almost from the moment of their first meeting. Building to awe and disgust at the peak moments. Loving protectiveness and utter terror. "You made me so afraid, Blake," he mused softly. "So afraid of losing myself to you. Of daring to believe in impossibly foolish dreams, in human trustworthiness, in _your_ human trustworthiness, in my own..."

The two years they'd been together he'd kept trying to break free of Blake, but always at the crucial moment, he'd chosen not to. Time and time again he'd risked his life for Blake, risked his life to pull the man back from the brink his own reckless heroism and quixotic crusading had brought him to. Time and time again he'd  tried to stop Blake from making a wrong decision, a futile gesture. But were they futile gestures? Blake had gone back to rescue Cally from the Federation--and had rescued Cally. Blake had taken the _Liberator_ through that vortex to save Gan--and had saved Gan.

And what about after Star One? After Blake was no longer with them. How many times had he, Kerr Avon, done the very same things, committed the very same acts of heroic desperation for the very same reasons? Was hitching a ride on an asteroid any less reckless than going through the vortex? Was taking _Scorpio_ down to cloud level to pick up Tarrant and Dayna on Helotrix all that different from refusing to abandon Cally? And what about the time Orac had recommended abandoning Tarrant and Vila, leaving them in "quarantine" aboard a ship with failing life support systems? "Oh, you'll have to do better than that, Orac," he'd replied, "if you expect me to kill them."

But he hadn't _recognized_ at the time that he was behaving like Blake. He'd always managed to pull out a "pragmatic" reason for any action he took that smacked of virtue or self-sacrifice. He'd woven himself into a thick cocoon of self-deceit, even convincing himself that he couldn't care less whether Blake had betrayed the revolution and gone to work as a bounty hunter for the Federation. If it hadn't been for Orac's self-confrontation program...

"I _would_ have killed him," he realized with horror. "I wouldn't have seen through the ruse, and, with nothing to prepare me for how much his betrayal hurt me, I would have blasted him to pieces."

And what of last week at the base? He forced himself to reexamine that painful moment which had set off this most recent bout between them and finally saw it for what it was: Yes, he reflected, Blake spoke recklessly when I cheered him for hitting Arlen. Because he was put out with himself for indulging his anger. Pathetically purist of him, but that's Blake. But you, Avon, you couldn't be bothered to notice _why_ he'd gotten so angry in the first place, to acknowledge that Blake was hurting inside for _you_ , utterly beside himself because he understood that his passion for mercy and fair play had pushed you, against your better judgment, to accept torture rather than inflict it. Damn it, Avon, Blake was empathizing with you. As usual he was stretching himself to the limit to reach across that unfathomable chasm between you, and, as usual, you made no effort to reach back.

All right, but Ryanec 5 was _still_ a stupid idea. A _really_ stupid idea. In a flash of memory, he was back on the bridge of the _Liberator_ , facing the Andromedan hordes, preparing to fire on them, to attempt to hold them off until help arrived. "This is stupid, Avon," he heard Vila insisting in characteristic panic and his own sardonic reply: "When did that ever stop us?" A quiet chuckle escaped from Avon, then a louder one. And before he knew it, he had thrown back his head in a paroxysm of hearty laughter. It felt good, like a deep physical release of every ounce of tension in his body...

Then, suddenly, through it, he sensed a presence and looked up. Looked up and found himself looking into the eyes of an old enemy.

"Is it a private joke, Avon?" cooed Servalan, smiling down at him. "Or can anyone join in?"

*****

"Why, Servalan, what brings you to Gauda Prime?" Avon kept his tone light, flirtatious even, as his mind raced to assess the situation.

She responded in the same tone. "Actually, an unfortunate incident at our base a little over a week ago. A band of petty criminals invaded the premises and inflicted some damage."

Avon rose carefully to his feet. "What was destroyed? Nothing trivial, I hope?"

The woman laughed. "Oh, Avon, you never change, do you?" He seized that instant to reach for his gun. "I wouldn't if I were you," she snapped, suddenly cold, and gestured behind her. For the first time he noticed the four armed Federation troopers standing some six meters away, their weapons drawn and pointed at him. He sighed and made no move to resist as Servalan reached over to disarm him. "Remain where you are," she directed her guards. "Allow us some--privacy. If he raises a hand against me or attempts to escape, kill him."

Avon eyed her warily, as she sidled seductively closer. "Well, it's been a long time, hasn't it?" she murmured. "Malodaar, I believe."

"Betafarl," he corrected. "Granted we never actually met during that fiasco--"

"Fiasco for you, Avon. I thought it went quite well."

"Point taken."

"But now, alas, you're stirring up trouble all over again." She paused. "My Base Commander Arlen is quite put out with you."

"Is she?" Avon retorted with feigned innocence. "I can't think why."

"Actually she was rather vague about the details," Servalan recalled, "though I imagine breaking into her base, drugging a dozen of her guards, stealing and destroying Federation property and leaving her tied to a chair all night might have something to do with it."

Immediately Avon was struck by what Servalan _hadn't_ included in that list. Don't jump to any conclusions, he told himself. This is no rank amateur you're dealing with. Lying is a way of life with her. She could have a dozen reasons for attempting to deceive you. Yes, but Servalan had said Arlen _is_ rather put out with you. "Is," not "was"... He laid aside his speculation and continued listening.

"I'll tell you, the whole episode has badly unnerved the woman. She's undergone a drastic personality change."

Avon smiled. "That can only be an improvement."

"I'll tell you something else. I'm not too thrilled with you myself at the moment. All that perfectly good Pylene‑50 gone to waste." Avon clucked in mock sympathy. "One thing that puzzles me though," she added.

"Only one?"

"All the other personnel were drugged. Arlen was left conscious. Why?"

Avon shrugged. "Blake's decision. Maybe because she's a woman. He has some quaint, old-fashioned tendencies, you know."

"Ah, yes, Blake," Servalan exulted. "Arlen tells me you came here to Gauda Prime looking for Blake--and then nearly killed him."

"Arlen exaggerates."

"You're on good terms with him again, then?"

Avon waffled. "You'd have to ask him that."

"I'd love to ask him that."

"Pity you won't be able to."

"Oh, but I will," the Commissioner said. "You're going to lead me to him."

All playfulness drained out of Avon's expression. "The hell I am!" he thundered.

Servalan faced him straight on. "Where's Blake, Avon?"

"I haven't the vaguest idea."

"Try again," she snarled, pulling her gun.

"All right," Avon obliged. "He's off-planet."

"Oh, really? What in?"

"We have transport."

"Then why aren't you off-planet with him? Couldn't tear yourself away from the local attractions?" Servalan indicated the surroundings with a gesture of irony. He shrugged. "Bad try, Avon," she sneered.

"Better than none."

"Don't play games with me, Avon. Where's Blake?" And she pointed the gun at his head.

"Oh, come on, Servalan," he chided. "You're not going to kill me."

His manner threw her off balance. "You can't be sure of that," she said. "What's happened to your legendary survival instincts?"

"Nothing," he replied. "They're as they've always been. It's just that I've come to realize of late that they fluctuate in strength from day to day."

She looked at him intently. "And how strong are they today?"

He returned the look. "Not strong enough to induce me to give you Blake."

"I see," she said quietly. Then, "I could offer other inducements."

"You could, but there isn't that much wealth in the entire galaxy." He paused significantly, and added, "Nor that much pain."

Servalan appeared genuinely shocked. "My goodness, you _have_ changed."

"Not really," Avon told her.

"No, not really," she agreed. "What's changed is your willingness to admit it."

"Score one for the ex-Supreme Commander."

"Care to tell me how that came about?"

Avon chuckled. "Believe me--you wouldn't believe me."

"All right, we'll let that go," Servalan said graciously. "Excuse me a moment." She walked over to the guards, exchanged a few words with them, then returned to Avon's side. "They're just itching to get their hands on you, you know," she informed him. "They enjoy making stubborn prisoners talk."

"Them?" Avon exclaimed with a mixture of amusement and contempt. "Surely you're not serious? That's pathetic. Servalan, you're a fool if you think that will work with me."

"Yes, well, I don't actually," the woman conceded. "I mean, I haven't exactly forgotten your famous five day battle with some of the Federation's best interrogators. But, on the other hand, I'm a leader, and a leader has to keep her followers content. You've learned that much from Blake, haven't you?"

"Blake's followers have different tastes," Avon sneered.

Servalan smiled. "No doubt. Still these are mine, and I must humor them every now and again. You do understand?"

"Oh, perfectly," Avon assured her with heavy sarcasm. He knew very well that she was the one who desired what was coming. She realized it would not get her the information she was after, but she wanted him distressed and hurting and off-center for whatever she had in mind to follow it with that she imagined would.

"All right," Servalan signaled to her men. "You can have a go at him." As they moved to comply, she caught one of them by the arm and whispered, "Whatever you do, don't damage him. I'm not through playing with him yet." Then she settled back to enjoy the spectacle.

As the guards surrounded him, Avon composed himself inwardly to endure their blows in silence. For the next few minutes they were all over him with their fists and feet, but, as beatings went, it was nothing to transmit home about, and only once did the pain get the better of his resolve not to cry out: when a boot landed directly over the laser probe wound. It angered him mildly that his body could slip out of his control that way, and more than mildly that Servalan's eyes danced with delight when it happened, but he let go of the reaction immediately for it seemed the height of irrationality  to rail against biology or to regard his involuntary outcry as a reflection on him. Some men might, but Avon took pride in the fact that his pride was not tied to such peripheral considerations...

When the beating was over and they'd forced him back onto his feet, Servalan sought to discover what had elicited that one gasp of pain. She slipped the left sleeve of his shirt off his arm and shoulder and immediately noticed the dressing, now hanging by a thread. She flicked it off altogether and her eyes widened in surprise. "That looks nasty, Avon," she said. "How did it happen?"

"You know--" he started and checked himself. He'd almost said, "You know how it happened." Appalling what pain could do to a man's defenses and clarity of thought. Any man's... "You just saw how it happened," he corrected himself.

Servalan glanced down at the dressing lying on the ground and laughed. "That's insulting, Avon. Even Vila couldn't be that stupid. How did it really happen?"

"It's a long story."

"I have time."

"I don't." My God, she _doesn't_ know. She really doesn't. Damn you, Blake, I'm going to wring your bloody neck.

"Very well," Servalan was saying, "I can let you keep some secrets. Bet it hurts like hell, though."

"Hard to say," Avon responded coldly. "Your goons have just given it a great deal of competition."

"Oh, I doubt that," she murmured with a predatory glint in her eye. She gestured to two of the guards to hold him still. Planting themselves one on each side, they seized his arms roughly and pinned his feet to the ground beneath their boots.

As the sun finally slipped below the horizon, Servalan broke a branch off the nearest tree and made an elaborate show of examining the tip of it, caressing it suggestively. Avon realized what she intended, and his flesh cringed at the prospect of it, but his mind remained coolly indifferent. He flashed her the most bored, nonchalant look he could manage.

Then she placed the tip of the branch directly against the open wound and gradually began to insert it. From the first touch it hurt horribly, but he breathed with the pain and succeeded in staying on top of it. Servalan watched his eyes and stopped the instant they openly registered discomfort. Knowing Avon, she was certain he'd been suffering all along--that this was simply the point at which he could no longer hide it from her. So she held him there, poised at the very threshold of his self-control. One tiny motion, and she could send him over the edge. He knew it. She knew it. And he knew she knew he knew it.

"Not enough pain in the entire galaxy," she quoted. "Those were your words, I believe. Are you still quite sure of that?"

"Quite," Avon said steadily.

The preliminaries were over. Servalan thrust the stick deeper and twisted. "How about now?"

The most sophisticated neural amplifier in the Federation's array of torture devices could not have been more effective. White-hot agony shot through his arm and seemed to explode inside his brain. He couldn't answer her. He couldn't get a word out. And he couldn't think of anything but the pain.

"Where's Blake?" Servalan demanded.

Through hazy consciousness the sound of that name restored his sense of purpose, the imperatives of "care": a determination beyond all animal instinct that Blake would come to no harm through his agency. I won't answer, he told himself firmly. No matter what she does. I just won't.

With consummate expertise, Servalan withdrew the stick part way, permitting him the briefest of respites, and then plunged it back in, twisting as she probed. "Where's Blake?" she repeated.

Avon groaned: a low, hideous, completely involuntary sound, scarcely recognizable as human. His legs buckled under him, and only the hostile hands which held him prevented him from sinking to the ground.

Servalan put the question to him again. And again. And again. "Where's Blake? Come on, Avon, where is he? Where's Blake?" Each time she jabbed a little harder and twisted a little more deeply.

Avon continued groaning, struggling futilely against the grip of the guards, his body writhing in helpless desperation to escape the torment. Sweat saturated his skin and saliva dripped from his mouth: a pool of choking, sobbing foam which slowly turned red as he bit through his lip in his agony. A massive chorus of inflamed nerves screamed at him to tell her, to say: Yes, all right. You can have Blake. You can have anything. Only, for the love of God, stop...

But he couldn't. Wouldn't. Didn't.

It went on for what felt like forever.

Servalan finally stopped when the wound opened sufficiently to threaten serious hemorrhage. She had no means of cauterizing it and did not want to risk a life-threatening loss of blood. She picked up the old dressing and staunched the flow as best she could with direct pressure.

Gradually Avon returned to a focused awareness of his surroundings. His eyes found those of his tormentor and locked on. "Positive," he rasped.

Servalan frowned momentarily, then she understood: he was answering her _other_ question, the one about being sure there wasn't enough pain in the entire galaxy to make him betray Blake. She felt a mixture of anger and awe--and jealousy--though she wasn't sure whether what she was jealous of was Blake's ability to inspire such loyalty in general or Avon's loyalty to him in particular. The leader and the woman in her contended briefly with one another, then decided there was sufficient jealousy to share between them...

She signaled the guards to retreat to their previous positions and offered her victim a flask of water. He turned away disdainfully. "Oh come on, Avon, be practical," she coaxed. "You've lost a fair amount of blood. You need to replace the fluid." He made no move to comply. "It's not drugged if that's what you're thinking," she added and drank from it herself.

He considered for a moment whether it might not be better to refuse the water, to hasten unconsciousness or even death, but he knew Servalan was too skillful to let him die unless she wanted him to, and drugs could keep him from passing out as well. Under these circumstances, dehydration would only increase the likelihood of mental confusion with its attendant risk that he might say or do something he couldn't recall, something that might harm Blake... He reached out for the flask.  "Just remember," he said, as he raised it to his lips, "I am immune to Pylene‑50."

"No need to worry," the woman assured him.  "There's not an ounce of it left anywhere on Gauda Prime."

He handed back the flask. "Where did it all come from anyway?" he asked casually. "The Pylene‑50--"

Servalan smiled sweetly. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Oh, damn you, Blake, I really will wring your bloody neck, Avon thought in response to the confirmation he'd just elicited. To Servalan he said, "Dearly, but since you're holding all the guns--not to mention the means of interrogation--it appears I shall have to contain my curiosity."

The woman scrutinized him closely: the torn and swollen lip, the bruises covering his beautiful face, starkly visible even in the rapidly dimming light, the injuries she couldn't see, but could well imagine beneath his ripped, disheveled clothing. And of course, the unspeakable mutilation inflicted on his already wounded arm. "That was quite a performance, Avon," she declared.

"I'm glad you were entertained."

"No, I mean it. You have my admiration."

"So what's next, Servalan?" he goaded. "Breaking my fingers one at a time? Smashing my ribs?  Crushing my genitals?" The catalog of proposed tortures rolled off his tongue like a weary recitation of last week's shopping list.

"Would any of that work?" Servalan inquired pointedly.

"What do you think?" Avon countered.

She smiled. "That my options in this crude environment are rather limited. And that the nearest proper interrogation center is several days' journey from Gauda Prime. Long before I got you through the front door, Blake would have realized that you are probably in hostile hands and would have taken the necessary measures to render useless any information you might possess regarding his whereabouts."

"Well, then," Avon began with an air of triumph, "that means--"

Servalan cut him off angrily. "That means you have got to tell me here, and you have got to tell me now."

"I thought we'd already established that that isn't very likely."

Servalan shook her head. "I don't know what we've established," she said. "Frankly, I'm surprised that you've resisted this far. Not that you could do," she clarified hastily, "only that you've chosen to do." Her face changed suddenly, signaling a new thought. "Perhaps it's not Blake you've been protecting."

"Could have fooled me," Avon muttered to himself.

"I realize there are others with him," Servalan continued. "Vila, Tarrant, Dayna, Soolin--and a man named Deva."

"You're well informed."

"They're not part of this, Avon. As far as I'm concerned, they can go free. And you with them, of course."

Avon felt a surge of temptation and pushed it aside. "Why?" he asked coldly.

"Because Blake is the one I really want," Servalan answered, "and because I think that their freedom from him may be something you really want."

Again temptation washed over him. Again he pushed it aside. "That's very astute of you, Servalan. I do think they deserve to be free of him." A distorted smile played on his misshapen lips. "The problem is, they don't _want_ to be."

"And that makes a difference to you?"

"Oddly enough--yes."

"But, Avon, six lives for one. Surely you see the logic in that?"

He smiled again. "Indeed I do. I just differ with you over who the 'one' is going to be."

"Why?" Servalan sounded almost solicitous, almost as if she were pleading with him to change his mind.  "Why die for them?"

He shrugged, biting back the pain that simple motion caused him. "Luck of the draw.  I happened to be the one to walk into this mess. I'm just not prepared to extricate myself at that price."

"Do you imagine _they_ would die for _you_? Or endure the kind of pain you just did?"

"Some of them would," Avon replied softly. "One of them would," he amended conservatively.

"I don't count Blake," Servalan sneered. "The man's a walking perversion of the life instinct."

Well, I don't count the others, Avon's mind retorted swiftly, but he didn't say it. Perhaps because he didn't understand it.

Now Servalan seemed to be gathering herself together for whatever grotesque climax she had planned for him. "Tell me, Avon," she purred, "do you know what a carimbula is?"

He searched his mind. "It's--a poisonous snake indigenous to Gauda Prime."

"Very good. And how much do you know about its life habits?"

"Very little." He made a small sound of quiet resignation. "But I have a feeling you're going to take great pleasure in remedying my ignorance."

"Indeed I am."

"So tell me," he invited with the same calm nonchalance he'd maintained from the start.

"I'll do better than that," Servalan promised. "I will show you." She snapped her fingers at one of the guards, and the man produced--precisely from where Avon couldn't see--a rectangular box roughly the dimensions of Orac. He placed the box on the ground at Servalan's feet and slowly lifted the lid.

Inside lay a coiled, serpentine creature, its coloring and exact size difficult to discern in the darkness. It was not moving. It scarcely appeared to be breathing. "It's in its dormant phase," Servalan explained. "Asleep--well, actually--more than asleep. More like hibernating. But not in response to cold.  In response to the absence of light. You see, it falls into this state every night at sundown and remains so until the following morning. While it sleeps, it's perfectly harmless. You couldn't rouse it by sound or by touch. You could fire a neutron blaster centimeters from its head, and it wouldn't stir."

Avon stared at the creature and emitted a snort of laughter. "I don't believe this. You just _happen_ to be carting a venomous reptile around with you? That's a bit much, even for you. What is it--a new interrogation tool?"

"Not--usually," the woman answered with precision.

Avon exhaled explosively. "You'll forgive me if I don't say I'm flattered."

"Ah, but you got the point."

"It wasn't very subtle."

"Perhaps not," she agreed. Then, "To answer your question, we've been collecting these snakes because we hope to find a way to utilize their toxin as a weapon--there being no know antidote to it anywhere in the galaxy."

"Charming," Avon muttered.

"Yes, I thought you'd appreciate the possibilities. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. I promised to show you a carimbula."

"You--just have," Avon responded, puzzled.

Servalan smiled. "Not the way I want you to see it," she said deliciously. She motioned to another one of her guards. "I said nothing would rouse it before dawn," she reiterated. "That wasn't quite accurate. Sound won't rouse it and touch won't rouse it, but light will." Now the guard approached, carrying a large floodlight. "I suggest you stand well back, Avon," Servalan advised. Seeing that she did so herself, he followed suit.

With obvious trepidation, the guard switched the light on and trained it directly on the open box.  As Avon watched, the carimbula began to stir. Lethargically at first, then more robustly. In less than a minute it was fully awake. It rose up in the box, uncoiling the entire length of its body, the vivid red color of its skin dazzling beneath the light. Then it emitted a menacing hiss as its tongue darted out in search of prey.

Avon reacted before he could stop himself, his eyes broadcasting terror and revulsion. The guard reacted, too, turning the light away rapidly and then, as the snake literally collapsed in a heap, slamming shut the cover of the box. With the provocation removed, Avon instantly recovered his control. It had been a primitive, probably even a genetically-programmed, reaction, he told himself. Certainly nothing he couldn't master.

But Servalan had witnessed his moment of vulnerability and was ecstatic. "Well, well, well," she declared. "So you're not beyond fear, after all."

His denial was swift and automatic. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The snake, Avon--you're terrified of it."

"That's your imagination."

"I don't think so."

"Think what you want."

Servalan cast a menacing glance at the closed box; then her gaze returned to Avon in an unspoken, but unmistakable, threat. "I want Blake," she said emphatically.

The guard had left the floodlight on, and Avon squinted uncomfortably beneath it, aware that his throat was quivering ever so slightly, giving him away to her. "You don't," he parried with forced humor. "Believe me, you don't." He motioned her closer, then whispered in her ear, "Trust me, Servalan, he isn't remotely your type."

She shook her head, chuckling. The man really did have incredible style. It was going to be a shame to have to dispose of him at long last, and so untidily, too...

But perhaps he could still be made to listen to reason. No, she corrected herself, to non-reason. To the capacity for blind, uncontrollable panic dwelling in the pit of his stomach like any other man's. If she could just find the words to unleash it, touch him viscerally in places where logic failed to penetrate, and where will--even his will--crumbled before the tyranny of sheer instinct... "Let me finish telling you about the carimbula," she said, her voice deceptively soft. "I mentioned, did I not, that there's no known antidote to its poison?"

"I believe you managed to slip that in somewhere, yes," Avon replied.

"Well, it's invariably fatal, of course--"

"No?" he interrupted mockingly.

"I wouldn't joke about it if I were you, Avon. It's not a pleasant death."

He steeled himself. "And now you are going to tell me just how _un_ pleasant it is--in exquisite detail."

"The venom of the carimbula contains one of the most potent neurotoxins known to man." Servalan's tone resembled that of a lecturer in biology at the Federation Academy. "Once injected into the bloodstream, it spreads rapidly throughout the body where it sets about to perform its mischief in carefully delineated stages. First it paralyzes the motor nerves--well, some of them anyway--the ones which control voluntary muscle movement, such as your arms and legs. Your vocal cords, too, so calling for help, even if there were anyone around to hear, would be quite out of the question, as would screaming from the absolutely excruciating pain. On the other hand, certain involuntary muscles continue to function for some time longer: your bladder and your bowels, for example." She glanced at him slyly. "I realize that may prove especially disconcerting to a man of your sensibilities and dignity. And then, of course, there's the fact that the sensory nerves are not affected--well, 'not affected' may be a less-than-optimal choice of phrase. I mean to say, one does not lose the ability to feel pain until almost the very end. Death results eventually from paralysis of the respiratory system. The victim's struggle to breathe towards the end is particularly pathetic. The entire process lasts anywhere from 12 to 30 hours." Again she stole a glance at him, searching in vain for some sign that the horror of it was registering.

"Oh you'll long for death, Avon," she predicted. "And worse than that, you'll wish with every fiber of your being that it could be Blake slowly dying in agony instead of you." With these words, she thought she detected the first flicker of reaction in Avon's eyes. Because what she was suggesting was unthinkable to him? Or because it wasn't? The moment passed too quickly for her to analyze...

Avon finally spoke. "Is that all?" he asked.

"Every gory detail," Servalan confirmed. "And it's what _will_ happen to you, Avon, unless--" her voice trailed off.

"Unless I give you Blake," he finished for her.

She looked deep into his eyes. "Last chance to do a deal with me," she said.

He did feel fear, Avon realized. Muted and controlled, but unmistakable, nonetheless. Some of it came from the very sight of the snake slithering and lunging the way it had done. Some of it from Servalan's graphically detailed physical description of what lay before him. And some from the unsettling note of prediction on which she had ended that description. Would he come to wish for death? Very possibly. He was too much of a realist to delude himself with romantic images of suffering "nobly", and those 5 days he'd spent waiting for Shrinker had taught him too much about the body's bottomless capacity for treachery. But would he reach a point of wishing he could substitute Blake for himself? That was almost more than he could bear to contemplate.

Well, it doesn't matter, he told himself with grim honesty. It won't matter then because what I want then can't change anything. The only thing that matters is what I want now...

You're getting off easy, Blake, he said to the man in his mind with weary affection. It looks like I won't be around to wring your bloody neck after all...

Servalan was still waiting for his answer. She hadn't taken her eyes off him for an instant. He met her expectant gaze and said coldly, "No deal."

*****

"You know, I just can't figure it," Servalan mused, as her guards were securing Avon to the nearest tree. "Blake's life and yours are not of equivalent value."

"You're right," Avon agreed. "They're not."

A look of shock spread slowly across her face as she absorbed the meaning of his statement. "What _is_ Blake to you, Avon?" she asked with uncharacteristic sincerity.

"I wish I knew," he replied, a deep sigh punctuating his words.

"And to think," she responded, "you're not even sure whether or not you and he are presently on good terms."

Avon smiled. "Yes, but you must understand, that's a semi-permanent state of affairs with us."

Servalan shook her head. "If I insisted on loyalty of that caliber in my troops, I'd be devoid of an army in no time."

"Very sensible of you to realize that," Avon taunted, as her "troops" (this particular subset of them, at any rate) finished binding him to the tree trunk.

Servalan inspected the ropes, making certain he would not be able to free himself. "I trust you are quite _un_ comfortable?" she murmured.

"It's not my favorite position for rest and relaxation," he conceded, taking care not to reveal what an understatement that concession was, as the stretched muscles surrounding the wound blazed with invisible fire.

Now Servalan produced a small jar containing what appeared to be a salve or ointment of some sort. She unscrewed the cap with exaggerated elegance and dipped her fingers inside. The substance emitted a slightly disagreeable odor, and Avon wrinkled his nose in disgust. "It's an extract of the shiloma plant," Servalan explained in response to his unvoiced question. "The small creatures on which the carimbula habitually feeds live amongst the plant and carry traces of the substance on their skin. We've been using it as bait to trap the snakes for our--research program." He stared at her, not yet comprehending. "Let's make this interesting, shall we?" she whispered. She stood back a pace or two and pretended to survey him from head to toe, as if looking for the most suitable place to deposit her "bait", as if she had not already decided... "Ah, yes," she murmured finally and began smearing it across his face, covering first his forehead and then his cheeks with it, her eyes sparkling in gruesome anticipation. "I think we'll skip the neck," she announced. "Wouldn't want to risk an accidental strike to the jugular, would we?"

What I wouldn't give to have at _your_ jugular, Avon thought, the fingers of his bound hands contracting angrily. He closed his eyes and shuddered involuntarily at the prospect of that viper feasting on his face--and felt Servalan deftly deposit the last thin layer of  extract over his eyelids. His eyes sprang open instantly and flashed pure hatred at her.

Her response was to press her lips against his in an expression of perverse passion. It hurt physically, but that was nothing compared to the loathing and disgust it aroused in him. He held himself stiff against it, deciding that any response--even one of overt rejection--would only excite her further. Perhaps a display of total apathy would at least humiliate her.

No such luck. Servalan broke away, chiding gently, "Why, Avon, you didn't kiss me back"--but she was glowing.

She ordered her troops to bring the box containing the carimbula and lay it at Avon's feet. Then she instructed them to remove the floodlight. As it was pulled back to a distance from which it could not possibly exert its arousing effects on the snake, Avon looked bewildered. Servalan bent down, removed the lid, lifted the quasi-lifeless creature in her hands and arranged it artistically, as though it were a piece of malleable metal, in winding coils around his right foot.

"Oh, Avon," she exclaimed, rising and meeting his eyes. "You thought we were going to get it over with quickly, didn't you? Well, get the beginning of it over with quickly, anyway. How little imagination you have. Don't you realize the anticipation is part of the torture?"

Her silky, teasing tones turned suddenly harsh. "I want you thinking about it from now until the sun comes up," she thundered. "I want your mind and your nerves in a million pieces before that creature even touches your flesh." Her voice lightened again. "My only regret is that I won't be around to watch. I'm due at a Federation conference off-planet tomorrow morning. My ship leaves Gauda Prime in two hours." Her guards had already moved off into the distance. She turned haughtily and made as if to follow them.

"Servalan." Avon's voice, calm and steady, turned her back to him. "I'm sure you're going to weave delicious fantasies for yourself of my coming undone. But let me tell you something. No, let me promise you something. They will only be fantasies. I refuse to serve as your accomplice in my torture. You may have the power to determine my end. You do not have the power to control how I shall face it."   

She looked him up and down. "Brave words, Avon. Maybe you even mean them, I don't know. I only know it's a pity you never took me up on my offer for us to join forces. I did so want to win you away from Blake."

"You versus Blake?" Avon repeated. "Don't be ridiculous, Servalan. It was never even a contest."

Rage burned in her eyes as she sidled close to him. "Is that a fact?" she hissed. "Well, I hope you enjoy your last few hours of life this side of hell, Avon, and I hope you think your Blake was worth dying for when the poison starts to eat away at your insides. Because I'll be back, and I will still find him, Avon, without your help. There are others less strong and stubborn than you who will hand him to me in a heartbeat."

Avon smiled. "You may be surprised how strong and stubborn people get when it comes to protecting Blake."

Servalan smiled back. "We'll just have to see about that, won't we?" The smile turned vicious. "Oh, one more thing. Blake will never know how you've suffered and sacrificed for him. Because when I do find him, I'm going to tell him it was you that betrayed him. Goodbye, Avon."

She left him seething with a passion all her pornographic sadism had been unable to incite. He strained futilely against the ropes and leaned out towards her as far as his drastically limited mobility would allow. "Blake will never believe you, Servalan," he shouted.

"Won't he?" came the taunting reply--an echo inviting anguish, which faded into the night as Servalan and her companions disappeared from view.

*****

"No, of course he won't. It's absurd. Don't even waste your energy thinking about it." Avon didn't have a whole lot of energy to waste, and he knew it. His body throbbed with pain in too many places to count, he was weak and dizzy from loss of blood--the wound Servalan had so cruelly penetrated was still bleeding, in fact--and horrible waves of iciness were beginning to wash over him.

Time to take stock of the situation. First: can I possibly get myself out of here? He carefully and systematically tested the limits of his range of motion. He'd already discovered in that angry lunge at Servalan that he could move the upper half of his body some 15 centimeters forward. Now he found he could move it to either side as well. His hands were bound separately behind him to the tree trunk, the cords of rope looped around his wrists, so his fingers could curl and uncurl, and they could explore the texture of the bark, but they couldn't access the ropes at all to work them free. It was a fatiguing and uncomfortable position in its own right, which would certainly become more so as the hours wore on, and the stress it put on the inflamed muscles and nerves adjacent to the wound turned discomfort into shards of pulsating pain.

Next he examined his legs and feet, but they had been tied far more tightly. Well, no surprises there. If he could have moved his foot, he could have kicked the slumbering carimbula off him while it was still in its dormant state. He might even have been able to crush it to death beneath the heel of his shoe, so obviously Servalan had seen to it that that was out of the question. In the bargain her henchmen had managed to drastically curtail the circulation of blood in his lower extremities, and numbness was setting in rapidly. As for the snake itself, that posed no immediate threat, so he resolutely refused to think about it at all.

All right, I can't get myself out of here, he concluded matter-of-factly. Can anyone else get me out of here? He had to admit the prospects for rescue didn't look good. He was hours from the farmhouse. Did they even realize that he was still gone? Very possibly not. He'd become so adept at keeping to himself--it was a skill he'd first cultivated on the _Liberator_ \--that none of his associates found it unusual for Kerr Avon to be "invisible" for hours at a time. In the wake of a quarrel with Blake, they would all but expect it, in fact. And even on the off-chance that someone did notice that he was really and truly missing, where would they begin to look for him? They probably wouldn't begin at all until morning, and by morning it would be too late.

If he'd taken a tracking device with him, it might have been different. But that had been the last thing on his mind when he'd stormed out of the house, vowing never to "do for" Blake again. The crack he'd made about dirtying the cuff of his shirtsleeve came back to him as he considered the absolute filth covering all his clothing, and a muffled snort of laughter escaped him, quickly stifled by the pain it brought on.

It's just as well he hadn't taken a tracking device, Avon decided. If Servalan had found one on him--and her goons could hardly have missed finding it--she might have simply settled in and "waited" for the inevitable rescue. Or left her men to do so if she really had to leave the planet. But sooner or later someone would have noticed his absence, and come for him. Blake probably. No, it truly was just as well he hadn't taken one. Better for it to end like this than for him to become the means, however unwillingly, of Blake's capture or death. Better for it to end like this, except...

His mind drifted back to Servalan's parting comment amidst intensified bodily shivering and a growing sense of thirst. The thirst was suddenly overwhelming, his throat dry, his tongue and lips parched. There's nothing you can do about it, he told himself stoically, so don't think about it. But why was he so cold? Granted it was nighttime, but the nights on Gauda Prime were not that much colder than the days--which were like temperate spring or autumn days on Earth. Suddenly he put it together: the thirst and the chills. He was running a fever, probably a moderately high one, too. Of course! The laser probe wound! In the dark he could not see it, but that had to be the explanation. Poor Soolin, he mused with uncharacteristic charity: You waged such a gallant battle to keep the bloody thing from becoming infected only to have Servalan infuse it with a sample of every living microorganism inhabiting the soil of Gauda Prime. Small chance your antibiotic tablets stand against that... He heaved a sigh. Nothing to be done about it. Nothing at all. No point dwelling on it. If I think about the sensations, they'll just get stronger. And it's not going to matter anyway in a few hours...

But that, indeed, left him only Servalan's last words to meditate upon: her threat--or was it a promise in exchange for his own promise to deny her the satisfaction of breaking down?--her threat to tell Blake that he _had_ talked. He tried to imagine that conversation. What motive would she ascribe to him? Would she say he had buckled under torture? Would she say he had sold Blake for power and wealth? In exchange for his own life and freedom perhaps? Or would she say it had been out of hatred and anger? "This is stupid," he told himself. "It's not going to happen in the first place. She won't find him."

But what if she did? Anxiety gripped him; he tried to push it aside. "Blake will never believe you, Servalan," he had said, and he had meant it. But now he wasn't so sure. He thought back to the last words he had exchanged with the rebel leader just hours ago and winced at the memory of the vicious way he had proclaimed his independence, at the memory of the pain in Blake's eyes when he'd rejected every last shred of kindness and understanding that Blake attempted to offer him...

He tried again to shrug it off. "So what if we quarreled? What's a few angry words between us? It was hardly the first time." _No, but it sure looks like it's going to have been the last, doesn't it_? His confidence in his brave words to Servalan faltered further. Might Blake not, in fact, believe her now, after that stinging farewell?

God, no, he mustn't, Avon thought in sudden panic. Dying was nothing. Even the prospect of dying in the kind of agony Servalan had described was bearable. But the prospect of Blake going through the rest of his life--or, worse, to his own death at Servalan's hands--convinced that Avon had betrayed him--that filled him with a desperation so dark he thought he would drown in it. It ripped at his gut like huge, tearing claws until he no longer knew if the uncontrollable shaking of his body came from the shivering of his fever or from the shriveling of his soul. The strong mental barriers he'd erected against the physical pain of his injuries collapsed. Unchecked by the force of his will, it proved too much to bear. He ceased fighting it, succumbed to the demands of his flesh for relief and passed out. Passed out and passed into a hazy realm of frightening, fevered images...

                 

_The farmhouse. All the others gathered in the sitting room. How very round the room is. Just like the tracking gallery at the base. Strange not to have noticed the resemblance before..._

_Everyone's talking, laughing, having a good time. They feel warm towards one another and safe in Blake's loving care. Suddenly a pounding at the door. Servalan and her guards come bursting through. Seize them before they can go for their guns, line them up against the wall. Dayna. Tarrant. Vila. Soolin. Deva._

_Blake is held separately, facing the others, and Servalan issues a command: "Kill them. One at a time. Make_ him _watch."_

_The weapons are trained on Dayna first. Blake breaks free from the two men holding him and runs to her, tries to shield her with his body. Servalan just smiles and points to Deva. Blake whirls around in horror at the sound of the gunshot and sees Deva fall. The guns are pointing at Soolin now. As Blake rushes to protect her, Dayna is brought down. The executioners turn to Tarrant. Blake finally realizes the futility of what he's attempting to do and stands there paralyzed in helpless grief as his remaining companions are slaughtered before his eyes. First Tarrant. Then Vila. And finally Soolin--pulled out from behind him while he's staring at the other bodies._

_Servalan smiles triumphantly at the torture she's inflicted, a torture far beyond any physical pain. "And then there was one," she proclaims._

_But Blake, to her momentary bewilderment, seems to be rising above his devastation. Something has occurred to him as he views the five corpses, something apparently triggered by her coy remark--for he, too, begins to smile..._

_"Oh, I see," Servalan murmurs in cruel comprehension. "Oh, no, Blake, I wouldn't be that careless. I just believe in saving the best for last." She snaps her fingers. The door to the next room opens, and the missing member of Blake's entourage is pushed out into the center of the carnage._

_Blake's final show of defiance turns to despair. "How Servalan?" he demands. "Just tell me that.  How did you find us?"_

_"Why, I should think that would be obvious," she replies looking towards her other prisoner._ He _sold them to me, Blake. All of them. Even you."_

_The rebel leader begins to crumble completely. He staggers towards his one-time friend, trembling with anger and disbelief. "Is it true?" he screams in agony._

_The other man stares back at him, overwhelmed by the accusation, then offers the only answer he believes can make a difference: "Blake, it's me--Avon..."_

 

Avon jerked awake from his nightmare, those final words still ringing in his ears. His too-abrupt return to consciousness left him momentarily disoriented, and before he could get his bearings in the present, he was catapulted back in memory to that other round room, that other battlefield on which something far more fragile than his courage had been tested, and he had very nearly failed, very nearly surrendered both Blake and himself to the blackest desolation imaginable.

"Avon, it's me--Blake." Those loving, trusting, reassuring words that he had come so close to dismissing as inadequate. Words he'd never before heard with _empathy_. Until now. Until he found himself _speaking_ them himself in that terrifying dream. "And I hesitated," he remembered with a shame so hot it scorched his soul.

All right, he told himself, trying to collect himself, all right, but in the end, I did believe him. And he'll believe me. He'll--  He broke off in mid-thought, as the awful realization hit him: But I won't be there! I won't be there to _say_ it to him!

In desperation, he thrashed against the ropes which bound him to the trunk, smashing his head into the wood so hard that the back of  his scalp split open. The fresh surge of pain, clamoring for attention above the background roar of ongoing agony, brought him back to his senses, to the rationality he prized so highly. Maybe--maybe I don't need to be there, his mind ventured tentatively. Maybe I don't _need_ to say it _because maybe Blake doesn't need to hear it_.

It sounded too good to be possible. Was it possible? Even remotely? Memory guided him gently to yet another confrontation, the one they'd had the day he'd caught Blake questioning Orac about him. "Were you that certain I wouldn't believe Tarrant?" he had asked. "Yes!" Blake had answered in a tone and with a force that left no room for the tiniest sliver of doubt. But he had mocked the answer--the way he always mocked extremes of trust. He had called Blake's certainty "arrogance", and asked tauntingly, "What do _you_ see it as?" And Blake had replied, "As my faith in you, Avon."

As my faith in you, Avon. As my faith in you, Avon. The words he hadn't wanted to let in for they seemed to demand something he felt unable or unwilling to give. Oh, but he wanted them now! He thirsted for them now, even more than his fever-parched lips thirsted for water...

"I don't deserve you, Blake," he whispered into the uncaring night. "I've never deserved you. But I've never betrayed you, and I never would. And I need to know you know that. But _how_? How can I _know_?"

"There's only one way," said a gentle, familiar voice inside his head.

"Blake?" Avon exclaimed. "Oh, no, I'm losing my mind. I must be. Or--it's the fever. Yes, that's it. That's got to be it. It's the fever." He wrapped himself in the safety of that reassurance for a moment, then realized that what he craved lay outside of "safety". With quivering trepidation, he addressed the voice. "How? Tell me, Blake. How can I know?"

The reply was immediate: "Through your faith in me, Avon."

It was the last answer he'd been expecting, and, as was so often the case with Blake's matter-of-fact penchant for stripping his soul bare, he couldn't handle it. Within the confines of his bonds, he rocked from side to side, squirming like a trapped animal. "I can't," he protested weakly. "Please, I can't. Not that. Don't you understand? Ask anything else." Even as he uttered the words, he knew they were futile. There _was_ nothing else to ask. No other key fit the lock to this door.

And so he could not cross the threshold. He was condemned to remain outside--like a hungry beggar, starving within sight of a feast dangled before his eyes but denied to him.

The voice inside his head spoke again. "What's the matter, Avon?" it sneered. "Couldn't you bring yourself to trust me to trust you just this once?"

He winced at the excruciating justice in those words. Servalan's worst tortures were truly no match for the suffering he inflicted upon himself. "Blake," he breathed passionately, "for what it is worth, Blake. If I _could_ give that to anyone, I would give it to you."

*****

The bedrooms in the Klyn family farmhouse were all located on the second floor. It had been a large family; there were six such rooms. The assignment of sleeping quarters amongst Blake's rebel band had been easy: the largest room (which in old-fashioned Earth terms would have been called the "master bedroom") went to the two women. The others were parceled out singly to the men. They were tiny, Spartan little cubicles but, for all that, seemed spacious when compared to the sleeping quarters on board _Scorpio_. Blake had known only the _Liberator_ , of course, but he wasn't given to complaining about physical hardship. Avon wasn't either, to be sure, but, with Avon, one got the impression he was stoically suppressing his complaints--with Blake it seemed more like he simply didn't notice. It was Deva who had found adjustment to the cramped quarters most difficult initially, but that had passed in a very short time. There was plenty of space to do everything but sleep, and, once asleep, the dimensions of one's surroundings hardly mattered.

On this particular night, Blake was finding sleep uncharacteristically elusive. Insomnia was supposed to be Avon's nemesis, he told himself, fidgeting in his bed and readjusting the blanket for the umpteenth time. A gnawing disquiet tugged at his mind, too vague to name, but it wouldn't let him rest.

A knock at the door suggested someone else was having trouble sleeping too. "Come in," he invited without thought as to who it might be. Whoever it was was welcome. From the earliest days on the _Liberator_ , Blake had never locked his door to his crew. It seemed but a natural extension of the fact that he never locked his heart to them.

He switched on the lamp beside his bed and pushed himself up into a sitting position as the door swung open to reveal the identity of his visitor. She was standing there in an alluring white nightgown which accentuated the curves of her supple body, her golden hair flowing down around her shoulders. "Soolin?" he mumbled, blinking.

"Roj," she whispered softly.

He rose and took a few uncertain steps towards her, startled by her appearance and behavior. She came the rest of the way to meet him, slipped her hands under his pajama tops caressingly and pressed her lips against his mouth. His response was to reach for her hands and remove them from his body, but he continued to hold them in his own with unmistakable tenderness.

"Do you object to my calling you 'Roj'?" she asked.

"No, of course not," he answered.

"To my touching you then." It was a statement, not a question.

"Soolin, dear Soolin," Blake murmured, the gentleness in his eyes melting away the self-protective defensiveness she was already preparing to retreat behind. He raised her hands to his lips and kissed each one in turn.

"My, you do everything with such class," she marveled. "Even rejecting a woman."

"You're a lovely woman, Soolin," Blake said warmly.

"I see," she returned, forcing a smile. "You just don't find me appealing." She withdrew her hands from his grip.

"Of course I find you appealing," he contradicted forcefully.

"Well, then--"

"Come here, Soolin." He guided her to the large armchair beside his bed, sat down in it and took her into his lap. "That's better." It wasn't "better" for her; it was confusing and supremely frustrating, but she allowed it for she trusted him more deeply than she had ever trusted another human being, more deeply than she'd ever imagined she _could_ trust another human being since that terrible day years ago when her parents had been murdered before her eyes.

Blake put his arms around her now like a father might, unself-conscious of touching her in places a father shouldn't. And they accused _him_ of child molestation? she thought in amazement, suddenly comprehending why Avon had once called him "the original unwashed innocent."

"Try to understand, Soolin," Blake was saying now. "I can't allow myself to become involved that way with any one person. It wouldn't be fair to that individual, not when I have an overarching commitment that will always come first, that may take my life at any instant."

"I understand that, Blake," she assured him.

"Do you?"

"And I could live with it," she added.

"Could you? Well, maybe I couldn't then. You see, it also wouldn't be fair to the rebellion."

She sprung from his lap and whirled on him with sudden anger. "Now we're getting honest."

"Don't be bitter, girl," he said beseechingly. "I love you all. But if I let myself love one of you more than the others, I'll start making decisions on the wrong basis. I'll become protective, maybe--"

Soolin looked deeply into his eyes. "I'd never ask that," she swore.

"I know you wouldn't, girl," he assured her. "But it could happen all the same. That's why I decided a long time ago that it has to be this way, that I can't be partial to any one individual."

"But, Blake," she burst out before she could stop herself, "you already are."

"I don't see that."

"Then you're the only one who doesn't." A trace of mockery played in her voice. She didn't mean to hurt him; she just couldn't keep it out.

"You mean Avon," he realized all at once. "But that's different."

"It's different all right," Soolin muttered under her breath.

God, Blake thought to himself with heart-wrenching compassion. How could I have been so blind? It's been there all these weeks right in front of my eyes. Avon knew it that morning when he saw us at target practice. He twitted me about it, and I never caught on. I should have realized sooner, spoken to her sooner. She doesn't deserve to suffer like this. But before he could think what to say next, how to assuage her pain, someone else knocked on the door.

This time the would-be visitor identified himself. "Blake, it's Tarrant. May I come in, please?"

Tarrant was on watch this night, responsible for the security of the house and grounds. If he had decided to interrupt the rebel leader's sleep, there had to be a good reason. Blake looked at Soolin and shrugged apologetically. She looked uncomfortable, but made a gesture of understanding acquiescence. "Come in, Tarrant," he called.

The pilot entered the room. "Blake, I think we might have--a problem," he started, then slowed to an awkward halt as he spotted Soolin. "Oh, excuse me," he stammered in embarrassment. "I didn't realize--"

"No, no, no, that's perfectly all right," Blake hastened to assure him. "We were just chatting."

Tarrant looked dubiously from one to the other, caught Soolin's over-eager nod of agreement and tried to dismiss the incongruity between her assertion and her attire. "If you say so," he murmured.

"What is it, Tarrant?" Blake prodded helpfully.

"Huh?"

"The problem you said we might have. What is it?"

"Oh, oh, right." The pilot finally regained some semblance of poise. "It's Avon," he declared.

Blake sighed. "What's he done now?"

"It's what he hasn't done--isn't doing," Tarrant clarified. "He isn't answering his door."

Blake laughed. "At this hour? He's probably asleep. What do you want with him anyway that can't wait until morning?"

"It can wait," Tarrant conceded. "That's not the point. The point is, I had some technical questions about Orac's scan for ships leaving Ryanec 5, and I was making my hourly rounds of the house, and I noticed the light was on under his door, so I knocked. He didn't answer, so I knocked again--several times. And I called out to him. But he still wouldn't answer."

Blake and Soolin exchanged glances. "What do you think?" he asked her.

"I don't know. I haven't seen him since you and he--since dinner," she amended.

"Neither have I," Blake realized aloud. He turned back to Tarrant. "Well, what then?"

The pilot frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"Did you _open_ the door? Did you go in?"

"To Avon's room?" Tarrant gasped in disbelief. "Without an invitation? I value my life, Blake."

The other man looked at him curiously, as one might look at a trembling child who is just a shade too old to be quaking at the dark. "All right," he sighed, reaching for his robe. "Let's go see what this is all about."

"It's probably nothing," Soolin remarked with annoyance. "Avon's probably just sulking about the quarrel."

"Yes, well his right to sulk ends where other people's sense of alarm begins," Blake proclaimed. "Are you two coming?"

"Of course," said Tarrant, his bravery restored by the prospect of having Blake as a buffer.

"I'll just run to my room for a robe," Soolin said.

Her room was on the way to Avon's. The two men waited for her, and when she emerged again, a groggy Dayna emerged with her. Tarrant briefed the yawning woman in hushed tones while Blake marched up to Avon's door and knocked sharply. "Avon, it's Blake, open up." No response. "Come on, Avon, at least acknowledge our presence, then you're free to go back to sulking for as long as you like." Tarrant and the two women exchanged glances of trepidation at Blake's no-nonsense tone, but there was still no response forthcoming from the other side of the door. "All right, Avon, this has gone far enough," Blake said firmly. "You're worrying people who care about you, and I won't have that. If you don't answer me now, I'm coming in." He waited about 15 more seconds. "Fair enough," he called out and ran at the door with his shoulder to force it.

It opened so easily he nearly toppled forward and fell. The others exchanged looks of astonishment at the realization that it hadn't been locked. Avon's locking his door was as much a certainty as Blake's _not_ locking _his_.

But Avon wasn't in there. A light had been left on, which is what had misled Tarrant, and Avon's communicator lay in plain sight, but the room itself was empty, and the bed had not been slept in.

Blake's expression of anger turned immediately to one of alarm. He went back into the hallway and began calling Avon's name. Satisfied the man was not on the second floor, he next started up the staircase to the third floor, still calling loudly. A minute later he came thundering back, two steps at a time and, without acknowledging the presence of the others on the landing, proceeded to the first floor where they continued to hear him shouting Avon's name as he moved around, opening and slamming doors.

The noise inevitably awakened the remaining two members of the household. Vila emerged from his room first. "Hey, what's all the racket?" he demanded. "Can't a man get some sleep around here?"

"Avon's missing," Tarrant informed him.

Vila blinked stupidly.  "Huh?  What?  How?  Missing?"

Then Deva emerged from his room. "Did I hear someone say Avon's missing?" he asked.

"Why? Would you care?" Vila shot back with hostility.

"Yes, I'd care," Deva declared, astonished and offended.

Suddenly Vila turned to Tarrant and blurted, "Gee, do you suppose he never came back?"

Dayna and Soolin looked at one another. "Back from where?" Tarrant countered.

Vila heaved a sigh and proceeded to paint a picture of the culminating moments of Avon's argument with Blake.

Moments later Blake came tearing up the steps headed for his room. "He's not there," he reported as he whizzed by. "He's not anywhere in the house."

"What are you going to do?" Soolin called after him.

"Get dressed and go looking for him," came the reply from inside the bedroom where sounds of drawers opening and closing could already be heard.

There was a window in the hallway on the second floor, and the assembled group cast skeptical looks at it, then at one another. It was pitch black outside, Gauda Prime's crescent moon offering no appreciable illumination. Amidst shrugs which conveyed a consensus that there'd be no way to talk Blake out of this, Vila and Deva returned to their rooms to dress. Tarrant, already dressed, and the two women in their robes headed for the first floor.

When Blake arrived downstairs, he was kitted up in full search and rescue gear, which included a knife, his old bounty hunter's gun and the strongest portable searchlight he could find, as well as a basic medi-kit and a supply of drinking water. As he came into the sitting room, Soolin was counting the small circular objects which hung by the front door. She looked at him and shook her head. He spun around and pounded his fist into the wall.

"What?" Dayna asked, not comprehending at first.

"Avon isn't wearing a tracking device," the other woman said quietly.

"Oh, great!" she responded.

"Will you be taking a flyer, Blake?" Tarrant inquired.

Blake shook his head. "Avon was on foot. Unless he's been seized by someone, I'll find him within a reasonable radius of here. If he was seized by someone, I'll hopefully find evidence of a

struggle. I can't spot that evidence from the air."

"Let one of us come with you," Dayna suggested.

"Or all of us," Soolin proposed.

Again he shook his head. "Thank you, no. If Avon has met with someone unfriendly and they're still out there, we don't need more than one additional person walking into the same trap." He reached for the item Avon had eschewed and clipped it to his jacket. "And I'll _have_ a tracking device," he added. "If we require rescuing, the rest of you won't have to set about it blind."

"Whom do you think he could have met with, Blake?" Soolin asked now.

The rebel leader shrugged. "Hard to say. Hopefully no one. Hopefully he's just fallen into a ditch somewhere and can't climb back out. On the other hand, there could still be a stray bounty hunter or two about who haven't gotten the word that Gauda Prime is legal again."

"Well, if _they've_ got Avon, we've had it," Tarrant declared. Blake stared at him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"            

The sudden upsurge of anger caused the pilot to flinch. "I'm sorry, Blake," he stammered. "Vila told me that the argument between you and Avon continued out here and got much worse and that he left in a real snit."

Blake continued to stare. "And you think because of that he would betray us?" In the background Vila and Deva had come downstairs. Soolin saw them heading for the kitchen and slipped away to join them.

"I think it makes it more likely," Tarrant said in reply to Blake's question. "Not that it's all that _un_ likely in the first place."

"Damn you, Tarrant!" Blake exploded. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Tarrant swallowed hard, but stood his ground. "I've been with him the past two years--you haven't. Avon puts his own life first, Blake."

The rebel leader cracked a small, sad smile. "Does he? Is that how he brought you all safely through the past two years--by putting his own life first?"

"All?" Tarrant echoed. "He lost Cally, Blake."

"And I lost Gan," came the quick, forceful response. "It happens, Tarrant."

The pilot sighed with exasperation. "I honestly don't know why you defend him. He's been insufferable since the night we raided the base. He's treated _you_ like dirt."

"It wasn't a good night for Avon," Blake replied gently.

"It wasn't a good night for any of us," the pilot exclaimed. "For God's sake, no one asked him to do what he did."

"That's a good point, Tarrant," Blake said emphatically. "I suggest you try hearing it as well as making it." He turned abruptly and walked from the room, leaving the other man with a gesticulating finger in mid-air and a puzzled look on his face as he tried to fathom the meaning of Blake's words.

In the kitchen, Vila, Deva and Soolin were drinking an herbal stimulant to ward off residual sleepiness and enhance alertness.

"I'm surprised yours isn't wine," Deva remarked sharply to Vila. Soolin laid a restraining hand on his wrist.

"I wouldn't drink wine now," the thief retorted. "How would I drink wine now? Avon's in trouble. He might need me."

"We don't know that yet, Vila," Soolin attempted to soothe. "We don't know that he's in trouble."

"Or that he needs you," Deva couldn't resist adding. Seeing the hurt in Vila's eyes and the rebuke in Soolin's, he hastily pulled back. "I'm sorry. I'm nervous about it too, you know. I'm not thinking straight. Don't pay any attention to what I say."

"All right, I won't," Vila agreed brightly.

"He's okay," Deva declared unconvincingly. "Avon's a survivor. Everyone is always telling me that. He's okay."

"Maybe it's his arm," Vila suggested. The other two looked at him. "You know, the wound," he clarified. "Maybe he passed out or something. That could be it, couldn't it?"

"I doubt it," Soolin said. "The wound was doing fine when I changed his dressing this morning--yesterday morning," she corrected in deference to the time.

"He's still on pain medication, isn't he?" Vila persisted. "I'll bet he didn't have any when he left here, so--"

"Give it up, Vila," Deva cut in. "We're all kidding ourselves, searching for a benign explanation for Avon's disappearance."

"He hasn't disappeared!" the thief shot back. "We just don't know where he is, that's all."

"Right," Deva inserted.

"On second thought, maybe I will have some wine." Vila started to stand up, then sat back down again. "No," he reiterated firmly. "No, Avon might need me."

Soolin reached over and patted his hand. "He's all right," she repeated mechanically. "He has to be all right." Her eyes veered toward the sitting room. "I don't know what will happen to Blake if he isn't."

In the sitting room Tarrant was mentally rehearsing a continuation of the argument he'd just been engaged in. "And another thing, Blake," he began, swinging his arm in passionate exasperation as the rebel leader returned.

Blake caught the arm in mid-air, pried open the pilot's partially clenched hand and placed an object in it.

"What's this?" Tarrant stammered confusedly, looking down at it.

"It's the detector unit for the tracking device I'm wearing," Blake told him.

"Well, yes, I can see that--"

"I'd like you to monitor it while I'm out and stand by your communicator. Can you do that?"

"Certainly, but--"

"Good," Blake cut in, finally removing the hand he'd kept lightly covering Tarrant's all this time. "Because I may need to call for backup in a hurry."

The pilot met his gaze. "You'll have it," he promised.

"I know that," Blake replied with an ironic smile. He turned to Dayna. "Tell the others I'm leaving. I'll see you all later."

"Good luck, Blake," she called after him, as he disappeared out the front door. Then she turned her attention to Tarrant who had fallen into a chair as if shot with a stun gun. "You look like a man who's just had the proverbial rug pulled out from under him," she observed.

He seemed almost to be groping for breath. "That's the understatement of the millennium," he declared.

She sat down beside him. "And a little hurt maybe that Blake was cross with you?" she ventured.

Tarrant shook himself, as if to shake off the "spell" Blake had put him under and said angrily, "He _always_ stands up for him."

"They have a history, Tarrant," Dayna pointed out.

"I'll say they do," was the sardonic reply. "Avon almost killed him, for pity's sake."

"And whose fault would that have been?"

"Oh, great!"

"I realize you were acting in good faith that day," the woman conceded, "but--"

"Not guilty," he interrupted. "Not _remotely_ guilty. You weren't there, Dayna, you didn't see how convincing Blake was. He _told_ me he was after the bounty on our heads. He _told_ me especially Avon's. If they were so tight, why was Blake testing him?"

"He wasn't," Dayna laughed. "He was testing _you_. And you passed. You tried to shield the rest of us. Then you tried to warn us. Blake respects you, Tarrant. If he didn't, he wouldn't bother to get annoyed with you for distrusting Avon. And he wouldn't have put you in charge of watching his back just now, minutes after you quarreled," she added, grinning.

"That was smooth all right," the pilot acknowledged.

"Smooth, but genuine, Tarrant. He's genuinely trusting you with his safety. And trying to show you you're wrong about Avon, of course."

"Do _you_ think I'm wrong about Avon?" Tarrant asked.

"I'm not sure," Dayna replied. "God knows you have your reasons. You and he have a history as well. But you have to admit it's an ambiguous one."

"I'm remembering the day he went for that space suit to save himself," Tarrant remarked.

" _I'm_ remembering the day he ignored Orac's advice and sent Soolin and me to rescue you and Vila from _Scorpio_ after Muller's android messed with the life support systems."

"And I'm convinced something dreadful happened between him and Vila over Malodaar on that shuttle," Tarrant continued.

"But he didn't fold under Federation torture that time, did he?" Dayna countered. "I don't think _I_ could have lasted five days. No, I _know_ I couldn't have."

"I just hope Blake knows what he's doing," Tarrant muttered. For the first time he looked at Dayna instead of off into space. "Well, would you like to keep me company, or are you going back to bed?"

"I don't think any of us is going to get any more sleep tonight," the woman chuckled, standing up. "I'm going to the kitchen to let the others know Blake has left and to fix something to help me stay awake. How about you?"

"Sounds good," Tarrant agreed, smiling.

*****

Following a course that fanned out from the perimeter of the farmhouse grounds in slowly widening concentric circles, Roj Blake was a study in serious, single-minded determination. All the petty aggravation and not-so-petty anguish of recent days had melted away. Avon was unaccounted for, missing, perhaps in mortal danger. Nothing else under the suddenly menacing skies of Gauda Prime mattered.

*****

Avon had been drifting in and out of consciousness all night--though thankfully none of his later dreams or hallucinations had been remotely like the first. There'd been thoughts of Anna and of Cally, however: wrenching and bittersweet. The regret he'd always tried to keep a small part of life mixing with the grief he'd rarely permitted himself to acknowledge at all... Pain wreaked havoc with his usual ability to shut emotion out, and there was incredible pain. The strain of having his arms pulled back around the tree trunk hurt more now than the assorted cuts and bruises. His fever-driven thirst had become an exquisite torture all by itself. Every pore of his skin seemed to be oozing sweat, and the stench of his own body nauseated him. He alternated between wishing he could strip off every last remnant of clothing and wishing he could crawl inside a thermal spacesuit, for those teeth-chattering chills continued to grip him in unpredictable waves.

And now the sun was slowly rising. Not very different from sunrise on Earth, Avon thought. He glanced down at the carimbula lying coiled around his foot as the rays of light moved menacingly closer. The moment they crossed this clearing of evergreen trees, the snake would come alive and begin its climb towards the bait Servalan had smeared across his face...

End of the line, he thought sadly, momentarily surprised that he was sad. Not so very long ago, he might have welcomed death. Bound to a struggle he'd refused to embrace as his own, deprived of even the smallest oasis of joy in the arid emotional desert which had become his existence--but that had all changed the day he found Blake again. At least I've kept you safe, he thought. For a little while longer, at any rate. Who will watch your back when I'm gone? He chuckled. Well, who watched it in the two years we were apart? Maybe I've overestimated my importance. Maybe I've underestimated you. Maybe you're not quite the innocent I like to pretend you are. Logic isn't everything. Wisdom sometimes works at least as well. And wisdom seems to enjoy masquerading as foolishness...

Listen to yourself, Avon, he chided. That fever is softening your brain. That or...? He stole another glance at the crimson harbinger of his impending extinction and swallowed hard. I'm not afraid, he told himself. It is pointless to fear death for it is irrational to fear what one will not be around to experience. And he meant every word of it, but, nonetheless, he couldn't still his wildly pounding heart.

It was what lay between the present moment and that culminating one which filled him with dread. Twelve to thirty hours, Servalan had said. He knew only too well that in the throes of torture, twelve minutes could be an eternity. He wondered what determined which end of the time spectrum a particular victim would face. Pre-existing physical status probably. Well, that was comforting: his own current status was hardly the picture of health and vitality. And the portion of his body Servalan had mapped out to be the strike zone--surely injecting the poison so near to the brain would be a hastening factor, as would the likelihood of his sustaining multiple bites rather than only one. Good, he told himself, that's good. It will be quick--well, quicker. Maybe not _even_ twelve hours... Anyway, he concluded philosophically, I've made my choice. Whatever happens, happens.

But the sunlight had reached him, was enveloping him now; he could feel the deadly creature at his feet begin to stir. And despite his best intentions, the instinctive revulsion he'd experienced initially returned. Returned and threatened to overwhelm him. The thought of that thing on his face... The thought of it lunging for his eyes...

Don't do this, he commanded himself sharply. You promised you weren't going to do this.

Will contended with terror and, in the end, the prospect of surrendering to fear in his last lucid moments proved more appalling to him than the worst visual image he'd conjured up. He laid the image aside. He replaced it with another one: the face of the man he was protecting by his choice.

He cradled that image tenderly in his mind, spoke to it in his mind: They say I have no heart. But you know better. _You're my heart_. Take care of my heart for me, won't you? And then softly, just barely audible: "Good-bye, Blake."

*****

"Hello, Avon." The unexpected sound of his name pulled him from his pre-mortem reverie with a start.

"Blake?" he exclaimed, scarcely able to believe his eyes or his ears.

The rebel leader was standing in front of him, an expression of parallel astonishment in his eyes. "God, Avon, look at you. Who did this to you?"

"Servalan--who else?"

"Servalan was here?!"

"Yes," Avon answered. "But could we maybe discuss it at a more convenient moment--that is to say, if there is going to be a more convenient moment?" With his eyes, he guided the other man's eyes from his bruised face and blood-soaked shirt to his feet.

Blake let out a gasp. "Good God, is that what I think it is?"

"It's not a garden snake," Avon replied.

Blake swallowed hard. Obviously he knew exactly what it was and what it portended. "Stay where you are," he directed absurdly, as he let his gear fall to the ground. "I'll get it off you."

The snake was now halfway between Avon's ankle and his knee. He watched Blake back up to the nearest tree and break off a branch some 30 centimeters long. Idiot, his mind screamed in disbelief. I've been to hell and back for you tonight, Blake, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let you let it be for nothing. You _owe_ me, Blake. You _owe_ me staying alive...

"It won't work, Blake," he said, struggling to keep his voice steady. "The minute you touch it with that stick, it will turn instinctively and strike at you."

"I'll be faster," Blake said, crouching down.

"I doubt that."

"I'll run the risk."

"I wouldn't advise it."

"I didn't ask you!" Blake's voice rang with passion, bordering on hysteria.

"Blake, listen to me," Avon begged. "For once in your increasingly improbable life, just listen. What you're planning won't work. I'm tied to this tree. If that thing gets you, there will be absolutely nothing I can do to help you--not even put you out of your misery." His voice faltered. "Please, Blake, don't force me to watch you die like that."

Blake looked up from the ground and saw, to his utter amazement, that there were tears on Avon's cheeks. He rose immediately, letting the stick drop from his hands. "All right," he conceded. "Your call then. What would you recommend?"

The carimbula was now at waist level. "You have a gun, don't you?" Avon replied. "Use it."

"You want me to shoot you?" the other man exclaimed in horror.

"No, Blake, I want you to shoot it--preferably sometime this week."

As Blake scrambled for his weapon, he saw Avon lean forward and down until his right arm lay across the snake's path. "God, what are you doing?" he gasped.

"It's okay," Avon said steadily. "It doesn't want my arm. It wants my face."

"How do you know?" Blake demanded.

"Trust me. I know. I'm just inducing it to take a more peripheral path to what it wants." With a cold-blooded calm that defied belief, he persisted in offering the viper what was essentially his bare flesh. Finally the creature made the transfer from trunk to arm. "Now, Blake, shoot it now," he directed.

The rebel leader leveled his weapon and almost instantly realized why this approach had not occurred to him spontaneously. "Avon," he said in a trembling voice, "I don't think I can hit it without hitting you."

"Which is _why_ I want you to shoot it now," the other replied. Nothing happened. "Now, Blake!" he repeated. "While it's still on my arm."

Blake's hand shook uncontrollably, and he used the other hand to steady it. "Don't move, Avon," he commanded.

"I wasn't planning to," came the reply from between clenched teeth.

Blake raised his gun again and was overcome by a sweaty anxiety which threatened his very grip on it. He knew Avon was right. He knew there was no other way. And he knew they were running out of time. He tried to remember what Soolin had taught him about seeing only the target and found himself mumbling, "Soolin might be able to--"

"Soolin isn't here, Blake," Avon said forcefully. "It has got to be you."

"I know. Yes, all right. Yes, all right," he repeated, struggling for control.

"Come on, Blake, do it. Come on, Blake, do it." The snake was now halfway up Avon's arm. Still the rebel leader hesitated. "Trust me, Roj," Avon screamed.

"Trust _you_!"

"Yes, trust me. I won't move. You won't hit anything vital. _Now_ , damn it, Blake!" The snake was at his shoulder. Avon braced himself against the tree trunk, his fingers gripping the bark so tightly that the wood cut into his flesh.

Blake aimed his weapon a final time. Avon was looking at him with such total trust and acceptance, murmuring over and over again, "Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes." He allowed the sound of the words to guide him like a mantramic chant, focussed all his concentration on his target and pulled the trigger.

The snake fell to the ground, but was still moving. Blake fired twice more, and it stopped moving. Only then did he turn back to see Avon still gripping the tree trunk as though he were nailed to it.  Blood trickled from his shoulder, and what little color remained in his face was rapidly draining away as he gasped for breath. The rebel leader rushed to his side, knife in hand, and began slicing through the ropes.

"May I move now, Blake?" Avon whispered weakly and collapsed unconscious in his arms.

*****

Blake lowered Avon gently to the ground. His breathing sounded more normal now, and his pulse, though rapid, was not unduly weak. Now that the immediate danger was past, it hit Blake just how close he had come to losing this man--and why. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn't have hesitated--which proved the point he'd been making to Soolin about the risks of unequal affections, but proved her point to him as well. Adrenalin surged through his body, and he started shaking.

Then he saw that Avon was shaking. His focus on himself ceased instantly, and he moved closer to ascertain what was wrong. He placed a hand on Avon's forehead. "My God, you're burning up," he exclaimed. He took off his own jacket and wrapped it around the man. The shaking diminished. He opened the flask of water he'd brought with him and moistened a clean cloth. As he reached out to place the cloth on Avon's face, he noticed that his own fingers were slightly sticky where they had touched Avon's forehead before. The consistency was not entirely that of human sweat. He raised his fingers to his nose and sniffed cautiously.

Shiloma extract! Avon's words drifted back to him. "It doesn't want my arm. It wants my face." "You're sick, Servalan," Blake snarled aloud. "You're really sick." He began using the wet cloth to wipe the rest of the substance off Avon's skin and, as he did so, the unconscious man suddenly struck out at him in mindless terror.

Blake didn't need Cally's telepathic powers to guess the substance of the nightmare agitating Avon's brain. He stopped his cleansing immediately, put his arms around his friend and whispered soothingly, "No, no, Avon, it's me, it's me, it's only me." The words must have gotten through, for Avon stopped struggling and allowed himself to be held. "You're dead, Servalan," Blake swore hotly. "Mark my words."

He laid Avon out flat on the ground once more and proceeded to conduct a more thorough examination of his condition. The tattered shirt he peeled away completely, revealing the extensive bruising and lacerations. Almost immediately his attention was diverted to the worst injury--which was not the one his gun had inflicted (that, thankfully, was only a flesh wound), but the old laser probe wound, now several times its original size and spewing out bloody pus. Blake shut his eyes in anguished imagination of the details behind that atrocity and shuddered. He heard Avon stirring a little, moaning a little, and reached out in automatic compassion to hold his hand. It was then he discovered that both palms were crisscrossed with deep bloody grooves and realized what Avon had done to keep himself motionless while facing the gunfire he knew was going to hit him. "Oh God, Avon, I am so sorry," he cried. "As if you weren't already in enough pain."

Tears sprang to Blake's eyes, but he forced them back as he whipped out his communicator and hit the button with anger. "Blake to base."

"Tarrant here," came the prompt response.

"Tarrant, I've found him," Blake said as steadily as he could manage. "He's been injured, and I need to move him out of here. Have you a fix on our position?"

"Yes, I do," the pilot replied.

"How long will it take you to get a flyer to us?"

A momentary pause, then, "Approximately 15 minutes."

"All right, be as quick as you can. And Tarrant--"

"Yes?"

"When you set the flyer down, move in cautiously. I have it on the best possible authority that Servalan has been seen skulking around these parts. Blake out."

*****

At the farmhouse everyone was huddled around Tarrant. "He did say Servalan, didn't he?" Soolin double-checked.

"My least favorite person in the galaxy," Dayna confirmed.

"Did Servalan get Avon?" Vila asked.

"Well, if she did, Blake's gotten him back," Tarrant replied.

"Yeah," mused Deva, "but in what condition?"

"We'll find out soon enough," the pilot declared, moving toward the door and grabbing a tracking device.

"I'm coming with you," Soolin announced suddenly.

"So am I," Dayna echoed.

"That leaves one too many persons for the flyer," Tarrant pointed out.

"So I'll come too," Vila declared. Everyone looked at him. "Well, if there's one too many, there ought to be two too many," he endeavored to explain. "That way, the one won't be alone when she's left alone--if you see what I mean."

"What Vila means is he wants to see Avon," Dayna translated.

"You're damn right I do," the thief confirmed. "A Delugian Sea Monster couldn't keep me away." His face changed as he reconsidered his rash statement. "Well, nothing _but_ a Delugian Sea Monster could keep me away."

"Are you volunteering to be one of the two left behind on the first trip back?" Tarrant asked him.

"I'm volunteering to _walk_ back, if necessary," he answered. Dayna grinned. "I don't think anyone expects you to go _that_ far, Vila." She pinned a tracking device on her shirt and passed one each to Vila and Soolin.

"Is there anything I can do here to get things ready?" Deva offered quietly.

"Just turn Avon's bed down for him," Tarrant suggested. "We don't know the nature or extent of the injuries yet."

"Blake had a medi-kit with him, didn't he?" Soolin asked.

"I think so," Dayna said, straining to remember.

"I'll get another one just to be safe."

"Make it quick," Tarrant called after her. "Blake sounded--I don't know--anxious." He turned to Deva. "You could also monitor our position and keep a communicator open."

"And do what if you get into trouble?" the man inquired. They all knew he couldn't pilot the other flyer.

Tarrant shrugged. "Whatever you would have done the night we raided the base, I guess."

Moments later everyone but Deva was headed towards the flyers. Soolin walked with Vila and, a few paces behind, Dayna walked with Tarrant. "I hope we do run into Servalan," Dayna declared, checking her weapon menacingly.

"Planning to kill her for a change?" Vila called back over his shoulder.

Tarrant stifled a giggle. "That's not funny," the woman rebuked. "Someone's got to kill her."

"There are four of us," the pilot pointed out.

"I doubt you're up for it," Dayna muttered.

He came to an abrupt stop and pulled her to a halt beside him. "What kind of crack is that?"

"I think you know," she answered.

"I think I know too," he agreed. "And I don't like it."

"Are you saying you could kill Servalan?" she countered. "Actually look her in the eye and pull the trigger?"

"If it's a matter of her versus one of us?" Tarrant replied. "I wouldn't hesitate for an instant."

"Even if the one is Avon?"

Tarrant looked deeply offended. "I can't believe you said that," he exclaimed.

Up ahead Vila and Soolin realized they were alone and also stopped. "Come on, you two," Soolin called out to them. "This isn't a pleasure jaunt we're going on."

In a less than whole-hearted gesture of apology, Dayna offered Tarrant her hand. In a less than whole-hearted gesture of acceptance, he took it--and wondered for the thousandth time since his liaison with Servalan on Virn if that one night of indiscretion had irrevocably cost him any chance for the relationship he really wanted with the one woman he increasingly realized he really loved.

*****

After he'd finished talking to Tarrant, Blake had continued his ministrations to Avon. He'd given him an injection of the anti-shock/ anti-pain medication which Dayna had used following the laser probe incident and reapplied a cool, wet cloth to his forehead. As long as he just left it there and didn't try to move it around, Avon seemed to accept it. Blake also cleaned the wound he'd inflicted as best as he could and covered it with a sterile dressing, though he didn't dare touch that other one for fear of causing additional agony.

He then rolled up Avon's trousers and saw how white his legs were where the ropes had cut into them. He started gently massaging them, once more taking care to keep pressure off what looked to be the worst of the welts. Whether because of the massage or because of the drug he'd administered--or both--Avon started to come around.

"Blake, what are you doing?" he breathed with some effort.

The rebel leader smiled down at him. "Well, at the moment I'm trying to stimulate the circulation in your legs. More generally, I'm trying to make you as comfortable as possible till Tarrant gets here with a flyer."

"Do you think I could have some water?"

"Yes, of course." Blake rushed for the flask, then supported Avon's head and helped him to drink.

Avon allowed himself a rare show of sensory pleasure, whispering, "Oh, that tastes so good."

"I can imagine," Blake murmured, leaving him a piece of wet cloth to suck on. "You're running quite a respectable fever."

Avon sighed. "I know."

"Can you tell me for how long?"

"Hours. It's from the wound, I think."

"Yes, it's badly infected," Blake said quietly. "It looks as if someone's been practicing reverse first aid on it."

Avon drew in his breath. "There's something I have to tell you."

"Later," the other urged. "Now, just rest."

"Blake, you've seen what was done to me," Avon persisted. "You have got to be wondering."

"I'm wondering any number of things," the rebel leader replied. "But that's not one of them."

Avon took in his meaning with astonishment and gratitude--and, surprisingly, without resentment. "Something else then," he forced out with effort.

"Later," Blake repeated.

"No, now." Avon's chest moved up and down in obvious discomfort from the strain of attempting to speak. "Servalan has no idea we know where the Pylene‑50 comes from," he said. "You were right about Arlen."

"I know I was right about Arlen," Blake responded with a laugh. "Why do you keep wasting your energy trying to tell me things I already know?"

Avon's expression changed to a scowl. "Oh damn you, Blake," he breathed, trying to lift himself up. "I'm going to wring your bloody--" The exertion proved too much for him. He fell back down without finishing the sentence and faded out again.

Blake regarded the unconscious visage with fond amusement. "That's one way to have the last word," he remarked. He checked his chrono. It had been just about 15 minutes since his call for assistance. Tarrant should be arriving any instant...

On the ground Avon had started to shiver once more. Blake hesitated for a moment, then muttered, "Oh, the hell with it," dropped to his knees and pulled Avon close against him, using his own body heat to keep the man warm. Avon's face lay against his chest, and Blake lowered his chin till it came to rest on the top of Avon's head. "My brilliant steel diamond," he murmured. "Such a reluctant warrior you are, but so good at it. You're going to be all right, Kerr, I promise you will. Only whatever you do, don't wake up just yet. Not just yet." As he clasped the man tightly to him and showered him silently with love, Avon's body relaxed completely in Blake's embrace; Avon's hand reached out for Blake's hand and closed around it.

*****

That is how Tarrant found them moments later--Blake so absorbed in holding Avon that he scarcely registered the pilot's presence. And Tarrant assumed the worst. "My God, is he--?"

"No, of course not!" Blake answered, carefully lowering Avon to the ground and standing up himself. "He's just passed out. Thank you for getting here so promptly."

Tarrant nodded a perfunctory acknowledgment. "The others will be along in a minute."

"Others?" Blake frowned.

"Everyone came except Deva," Tarrant told him. "They're just throwing some camouflage over the flyer." He gestured towards Avon. "How bad is he?"

"Bad enough."

"Servalan's doing?"

"Most of it." Blake sighed. "The gunshot wound near the right shoulder is mine."

"What!" Tarrant gasped in disbelief.

"It's complicated," Blake said quietly. "There's something more important I want you to take a look at first--before the others get here and before he wakes up." Taking Tarrant by the arm, Blake guided him closer. The pilot gazed at Avon's swollen face and what blood and bruises were visible through his torn clothing. "The bits you can't see are more or less the same as the bits you can," Blake told him. "And then there's this." He momentarily exposed the worst of the injuries.

Tarrant flinched visibly, stifling a gasp and carefully avoiding meeting Blake's eyes, which he could feel boring into him, watching him, weighing his reaction. "Do you know what Servalan was after?" he asked finally.

"No, but I know what she didn't get."

The rebel leader's words simultaneously deepened Tarrant's shame and induced him to deal with it. "I owe you an apology, Blake," he said, facing the man.

"You owe _him_ an apology!" Blake corrected forcefully.

"He'll have it," Tarrant promised.

Blake grabbed him by the arm. "Tarrant, if you've half the sense I hope you have, you'll make that apology in your heart, and _he_ will never hear a word about any of this."

The pilot nodded, mumbling, "Of course. You're right. Of course."

At that moment, Soolin came charging into the area, flamboyantly swinging her gun in all directions. Convinced that Servalan was not in the immediate vicinity, she holstered her weapon and, as she did so, caught sight of the dead snake. "A carimbula!" she exclaimed with alarm, then, glancing at Avon, "Blake, did it bite him?"

"No," Blake assured her. "No." She heaved an audible sigh of relief.

Then Dayna and Vila arrived on the scene. The thief went straight to Avon, took one look and cried, "What happened? Is he going to be all right?"

Tarrant took it upon himself to reply. "Well, I've yet to hear the full story, but the abridged version seems to be: Servalan tortured Avon. Then Blake shot him."

Soolin's mouth fell open. She rushed to Blake's side and stared at him with intense concern. Blake barely noticed, for he was in the process of flashing Tarrant a look of pure exasperation.

Vila staggered a few steps and sort of sagged. "I knew I should have had that wine," he moaned.

" _Blake_ shot _Avon_?" Dayna echoed in disbelief. "I always expected it would be the other way 'round."

"Dayna, for God's sake," Soolin said fiercely, "It wasn't like that!"

"How do you know what it was like?" Dayna retorted. "You weren't there."

"I don't have to have been to know it wasn't like that," the other woman replied.

"Thank you, Soolin," Blake said quietly.

"Vila," Tarrant called. "Come give me a hand, will you?" He was kneeling beside Avon. "Let's see if we can figure out the best way to move him from here to the flyer." Vila joined him, and Dayna did also, wanting to make her own medical assessment of Avon's condition.

Soolin and Blake moved off a short distance to talk privately. "What did happen, exactly?" the woman asked.

"He was tied to that tree," Blake said, pointing. "The carimbula was wrapped around his arm and slithering up towards his face."

Soolin frowned. "His face? Why? They're not partial to people's faces."

"They are if the face in question has shiloma extract smeared all over it," Blake retorted.

"My God..."

"So there was Avon helpless, and there was the snake about to help itself to him. I had to shoot it."

"Yes. Thank goodness you didn't hesitate."

"But I did, Soolin." She stared at him, uncomprehending. "I was afraid I'd miss," he explained. "I was afraid I _wouldn't_ miss. Hell, I was afraid he'd _move_."

"He didn't move?" she exclaimed incredulously.

"No," Blake replied. "Didn't even flinch." Then, with a gentle laugh, "He handled it better than I did."

"Blake, you acted in time. That's all that matters." The passion in Soolin's voice drew only a blank expression from the man, and she realized immediately her mistake in seeking to soothe his ego. Blake hadn't been speaking out of self-disparagement at all, but out of pure pride in Avon. "Sorry," she murmured sheepishly, "If it's not wounded, don't heal it." He continued to look at her with bewilderment. A short distance away, Avon began to stir in response to Tarrant and Vila's efforts to lift him. "I think he's coming around," Soolin said, and she gave Blake a small shove. "Go to him."

This time Blake understood completely and was filled with boundless gratitude for her gesture of relinquishment. Thank you, he mouthed silently.

Avon _was_ conscious. "Blake," he moaned, his voice a mix of pain and confusion. Tarrant and Vila stopped trying to handle him and made way for the rebel leader, who dropped down beside him.

"Right here," Blake said tenderly. "How are you feeling?"

Gradually Avon's vision cleared, and his mind cleared with it. But now that the others were present, and he'd had a chance to rest, and the pain was partially muted by the drugs he'd been given, his habitual defenses were snapping back into place. He ignored Blake's question as such, looked down at his chest, which was covered only by the other man's jacket, looked back up at Blake and commented wryly, "I think you owe me a new shirt."

There was an abortive giggle or two in the background as a palpable wave of relief coursed through the group. "Well, now," Blake responded, instinctively matching Avon's tone, "that may present a problem. You see, there isn't a single decent place to shop for clothes on all of Gauda Prime."

With an expression of unchanging seriousness, Avon inquired, "What about on Ryanec 5?"

Blake drew in his breath. "Much better, I'm told. All the latest fashions in from Earth."

"Well, then," Avon declared, "it seems I shall have to stick around long enough to collect the debt you owe me."

Blake struggled, not entirely successfully, to keep the joy from showing in his eyes and voice. "By all means," he replied with stiff formality.

Watching them, Vila made no such effort: he was positively beaming.

Then Avon attempted to stand up. The others looked alarmed, but Blake motioned to them to let him try. With some difficulty--a little unsteadiness and more than a little discomfort from the still-impaired circulation in his legs--he made it to his feet. The attempt to put Blake's jacket on proved far more difficult for his arms still felt as if they'd been wrenched out of their sockets. Trying to force them through the sleeves resulted in a howl of pain, and he quickly abandoned the effort, letting Blake drape the garment over his shoulders instead. Then he asked, "Where's the flyer?"

Tarrant pointed in the appropriate direction. "About 50 meters," he said. "Here, let me--" He reached out to offer Avon physical support, as Vila simultaneously did likewise from the other side.

Avon cast them both off with an inelegant gesture of dismissal. "All right. All right. Stop fussing. I can walk, you know. It wasn't my leg that was shot."

"Wasn't his mouth either," Vila muttered, then noticed the carimbula for the first time and let out a shriek of terror.

"Relax, Vila, it's dead," Dayna laughed.

"It is?" the thief said dubiously. He looked more closely and even poked at the creature timidly with a stick. "What do you know? So it is."

"Vila's volunteered to wait for the second flight back," Dayna announced with mock sadism.

"Wait with _that_ thing?" the thief gasped. Evidently its being dead went only so far toward allaying his fear.

"I'll wait with you, Vila," Blake offered.

"You'll do nothing of the sort," Soolin said sternly. "You've been out half the night walking around. You're going back with Avon. _I'll_ wait with Vila."

The rebel leader nodded in acquiescence, fatigue etched in every line of his face.

Avon was already half-way to the flyer, followed closely by Tarrant, who was exerting great effort not to assist him, and Dayna, who'd caught them up after her last jibe at Vila.

Blake took his leave of Soolin with a bit of ritual platonic touching. As he was walking away, he pointed to the once-menacing crimson coil lying in the grass. "Bury that, will you?" he requested.

But he knew nothing ever would--or could--bury the memory of Avon thrashing in his arms in mortal terror, gripped by the illusion that Servalan's diabolical plan for him had come to pass...

Back within the circle of evergreen trees where it had all happened--the horror, the heroism, the healing--Soolin stood staring after the man she loved, but knew she would never possess.

"A credit for your thoughts?" Vila teased.

Soolin flashed him a wistful smile. "Avon is staying," she said simply. "All's right with Blake's world."


End file.
